Sometimes a good movie and one of interest to someone becomes known by word of mouth versus the trailers and common advertising. Not everything gets the media hype. There are also excellent older movies that folks may not know about. Not everyone will like everything, but that's OK. Enough postings should provide something for everyone. I'll start this off with several very recent films. I watch a very wide range of films, domestic and foreign, from numerous genre. Title and release year plus a line or two with what it's about. The year helps with confusion between multiple movies with the same title. If it's a foreign film, the country would be good too. The director is helpful for some, but not essential. Someone can look it up on RT or IMDb. Follow my format or create one of your own. :-)
I'll kick it off with the ones from the past few days as I've been on a binge of some older movies . . .
The Freshman (1925)
Directors: Sam Taylor & Fred C. Newmeyer
Starring: Harold Lloyd
Genre: Comedy Silent
More important in the silent era comedies were the actors. Nearly everyone knows about Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. The third, lesser known now, but just as famous then, was Harold Lloyd, recognizable with his trademark round black rimmed glasses and straw hat. In this one, Harold goes off to college and to impress a girl he goes out for the football team. However, he's not an athlete and it shows. It's a superb comedy silent on par with the best of Chaplin and Keaton, and like them, he performed all his own stunt work. Harold Lloyd's other very notable feature film is Safety Last! (1923). If you've seen a silent film poster with a man hanging from a clock hand high up the side of a skyscraper, it's from that film.
Ride the Pink Horse (1947)
Director: Robert Montgomery
Genre: Film-noir Crime
One of the post-WWII classic film-noir, the director also plays the lead role. Unlike the typical gritty urban film-noir, this one is set in a New Mexico town near an indian reservation during a fiesta. Montgomery is a secretive ex-GI who plans to extort money from a prominent gangster as retribution for the death of his best friend. An FBI man would like the government to get the incriminating information on the gangster that Montgomery is carrying. The femme fatale is an indian woman who shows up serendipitously throughout to help Montgomery, which is different from the traditional role for the female lead. One of the lesser known film-noir from the immediate post-WWII era, it has a 100%/90% rating on RT making it an excellent one for film-noir lovers.
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Country: Sweden (Swedish dialog with English subtitles)
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Bergman is one of Europe's most famous film directors. During the fall, winter and spring he was a stage director with a regular troupe of players. During the off season he would make films with them. Also written by Bergman, this was his first successful feature film. It was so successful that the production company, Svensk Filmindustri, gave him a free hand with just about anything he wanted to make thereafter and launched his lengthy film career. In this movie, three couples struggle to find happiness in love. It quickly becomes obvious they and their partners are not well suited for each other and are attracted to others. They end up spending a weekend vacation on a country estate with the extremely long Swedish summer daylight hours. A series of partner swapping interludes follows as they each finally realize their true soul mate is someone else. The double entendres come through very well in the subtitles. Subject material and dialog are very tame by today's standards. Bergman finally got it past the MPAA's straight-laced and draconian Hays Code censors for a 1957 limited release in the U.S. The basic plot line has been used and adapted by others numerous times (e.g. Stephen Sondheim's 1973 stage musical, A Little Night Music).
Splendor in the Grass (1961)
Director: Elia Kazan
Genre: Dramatic Romance
Kazan's pre-1968 movies pushed some of the boundaries with the MPAA's Hays Code censors, including this one, with its mature subject material. In Warren Beatty's film debut opposite Natalie Wood, the story is set in 1928. The plot revolves around two high school seniors madly in love with each other dealing with the typical sexual repression of the era and the effect it and the stock market crash that sets off the Great Depression has on their relationship. A more mature coming of age story for the two, it spans their lives from about 18 years old into their early 20's and is more drama than romance. Among Kazan's other films: Gentleman's Agreement, A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden, and On the Waterfront. A co-founder of Actor's Studio in NYC in 1947 to develop actors and their skills, Kazan was noted for drawing superb performances from his actors, resulting in 21 Oscar nominations with 9 wins for them across the 19 films he directed. Natalie Wood was nominated for Best Actress, losing to Sopia Loren.
Seven Days in May (1964)
Director: John Frankenheimer
Genre: Dramatic Thriller
Based on the 1962 novel of the same name, the screenplay for the film was written by Rod Serling and it has all the same tautness found in his Twilight Zone stories. The basic story is about a coup d'etat planned by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the other service chiefs and a senator. Burt Lancaster plays an imposing four-star USAF general and JCS Chairman with Kirk Douglas, a USMC colonel, as his Director of the Joint Staff (similar to a chief of staff; in real life the DJS is a two or three star flag officer, not a colonel). Frederic March plays the President who has just signed a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets. This rankles many U.S. citizens causing the POTUS' approval rating to plummet, and angers the JCS who sees the POTUS as a weakling and whose plans for a coup d'etat his DJS stumbles across. The film's pacing is excellent as the chess game between the POTUS and JCS Chairman plays out. This movie came on the heels of Frankenheimer's 1962 film, another excellent political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate.
Please do not feel the need to be as detailed as I have been. A blurb about what you've seen and perhaps something about what you think about it is sufficient.
John
I'll kick it off with the ones from the past few days as I've been on a binge of some older movies . . .
The Freshman (1925)
Directors: Sam Taylor & Fred C. Newmeyer
Starring: Harold Lloyd
Genre: Comedy Silent
More important in the silent era comedies were the actors. Nearly everyone knows about Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. The third, lesser known now, but just as famous then, was Harold Lloyd, recognizable with his trademark round black rimmed glasses and straw hat. In this one, Harold goes off to college and to impress a girl he goes out for the football team. However, he's not an athlete and it shows. It's a superb comedy silent on par with the best of Chaplin and Keaton, and like them, he performed all his own stunt work. Harold Lloyd's other very notable feature film is Safety Last! (1923). If you've seen a silent film poster with a man hanging from a clock hand high up the side of a skyscraper, it's from that film.
Ride the Pink Horse (1947)
Director: Robert Montgomery
Genre: Film-noir Crime
One of the post-WWII classic film-noir, the director also plays the lead role. Unlike the typical gritty urban film-noir, this one is set in a New Mexico town near an indian reservation during a fiesta. Montgomery is a secretive ex-GI who plans to extort money from a prominent gangster as retribution for the death of his best friend. An FBI man would like the government to get the incriminating information on the gangster that Montgomery is carrying. The femme fatale is an indian woman who shows up serendipitously throughout to help Montgomery, which is different from the traditional role for the female lead. One of the lesser known film-noir from the immediate post-WWII era, it has a 100%/90% rating on RT making it an excellent one for film-noir lovers.
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Country: Sweden (Swedish dialog with English subtitles)
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Bergman is one of Europe's most famous film directors. During the fall, winter and spring he was a stage director with a regular troupe of players. During the off season he would make films with them. Also written by Bergman, this was his first successful feature film. It was so successful that the production company, Svensk Filmindustri, gave him a free hand with just about anything he wanted to make thereafter and launched his lengthy film career. In this movie, three couples struggle to find happiness in love. It quickly becomes obvious they and their partners are not well suited for each other and are attracted to others. They end up spending a weekend vacation on a country estate with the extremely long Swedish summer daylight hours. A series of partner swapping interludes follows as they each finally realize their true soul mate is someone else. The double entendres come through very well in the subtitles. Subject material and dialog are very tame by today's standards. Bergman finally got it past the MPAA's straight-laced and draconian Hays Code censors for a 1957 limited release in the U.S. The basic plot line has been used and adapted by others numerous times (e.g. Stephen Sondheim's 1973 stage musical, A Little Night Music).
Splendor in the Grass (1961)
Director: Elia Kazan
Genre: Dramatic Romance
Kazan's pre-1968 movies pushed some of the boundaries with the MPAA's Hays Code censors, including this one, with its mature subject material. In Warren Beatty's film debut opposite Natalie Wood, the story is set in 1928. The plot revolves around two high school seniors madly in love with each other dealing with the typical sexual repression of the era and the effect it and the stock market crash that sets off the Great Depression has on their relationship. A more mature coming of age story for the two, it spans their lives from about 18 years old into their early 20's and is more drama than romance. Among Kazan's other films: Gentleman's Agreement, A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden, and On the Waterfront. A co-founder of Actor's Studio in NYC in 1947 to develop actors and their skills, Kazan was noted for drawing superb performances from his actors, resulting in 21 Oscar nominations with 9 wins for them across the 19 films he directed. Natalie Wood was nominated for Best Actress, losing to Sopia Loren.
Seven Days in May (1964)
Director: John Frankenheimer
Genre: Dramatic Thriller
Based on the 1962 novel of the same name, the screenplay for the film was written by Rod Serling and it has all the same tautness found in his Twilight Zone stories. The basic story is about a coup d'etat planned by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the other service chiefs and a senator. Burt Lancaster plays an imposing four-star USAF general and JCS Chairman with Kirk Douglas, a USMC colonel, as his Director of the Joint Staff (similar to a chief of staff; in real life the DJS is a two or three star flag officer, not a colonel). Frederic March plays the President who has just signed a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets. This rankles many U.S. citizens causing the POTUS' approval rating to plummet, and angers the JCS who sees the POTUS as a weakling and whose plans for a coup d'etat his DJS stumbles across. The film's pacing is excellent as the chess game between the POTUS and JCS Chairman plays out. This movie came on the heels of Frankenheimer's 1962 film, another excellent political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate.
Please do not feel the need to be as detailed as I have been. A blurb about what you've seen and perhaps something about what you think about it is sufficient.
John
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