Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Indiana Jones Trilogy (what’s Kingdom of The Crystal Skull?)
Raiders of The Lost Ark (1981):
Fast paced, fun, classic action movie with 2 film greats collaborating together in Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Haven’t watched this in years and surprised how awesome it still is.
9.5/10
Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom (1984):
Underrated sequel/prequel that has elements of a horror movie mixed with great action scenes, the minecart scene is probably the best part of the film.
9/10
Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989):
Awesome sequel which feels like a buddy comedy at times and made me want to study more on the lore of the Holy Grail when I was younger.
9/10
A perfect trilogy. Still don’t know what this 4th film people keep mentioning is, must be some prank.

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“I really have to feel that I could make a difference in the movie, or I shouldn't be doing it.“
Joe Dante

I love this movie so much. The meta aspect could have been heightened even further had Boris Karloff been released from the stage version to play Jonathan, but Raymond Massey is great in the role and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Indeed. Massey was great but I wouldn’t have minded if Karloff was allowed to play a killer that looks like him.

I halfway thought they’d have the description called in for the doctor as looking like “Peter Lorre” but they didn’t and I was mildly disappointed.

I've looked it up before, but I was never able to determine if the "looks like Karloff" bit was in the Broadway version, or just added for the film. Anybody know for sure?

From what I’ve read on it, it was in play as a cheeky nod to their casting. Now it plays off like an homage to the play.

I’m still gonna count it as meta.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Wow. I thought I was doing respectably well having seen as many of his movies as I have but you blow me out of the water. I phrased that first sentence wrong. This is the 21st Hitchcock I've seen. I haven't rated them all yet. But it would probably do better than last place (21st).

This film has one of the most tragic scenes in a film.

Kiss of Death - 1947 noir directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Victor Mature as Nick Bianco, a jewel thief who's shot and apprehended after a robbery gone wrong. He's pressured by Assistant D.A. Louis D'Angelo (Brian Donlevy) to turn state's evidence against his accomplices but Bianco holds true to the hoodlum notion of "no squealing" and chooses prison instead. While there he finds out his wife has committed suicide and his two daughters have ended up in an orphanage. He decides to take D'Angelo up on his offer in return for a chance at early parole. He ends up having to testify against psychopathic and sadistic killer Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) who is eventually acquitted. This sets up a showdown of sorts between Bianco, who has remarried and settled in to a quiet domesticated life, and the crazed killer.

Widmark steals the movie in his onscreen debut as the sneering, giggling villain. Mature also fills the role of sympathetic outlaw commendably. 80/100

It's nice to see so many people who like Arsenic and Old Lace. It's always been one of my favorite movies, but it doesn't seem to get much love around here.



If I remember correctly, the "looks like Karloff" bit was added to the movie version because at the time that this movie was made, Karloff was playing Jonathan Brewster on Broadway. Karloff wanted to do the movie, but the producers of the play wouldn't let him out of his contract to do the movie. However Karloff allowed them to use his name and his likeness for the movie.

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If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.

The reason that Arsenic and Old Lace wasn't released until 1944 was because they had a clause in the contract that the movie couldn't be released until the Broadway show ended its run, which didn't happen until 1944.

And I would respond that the warfare depicted in 1917 is depicted as having a positive impact, as Schofield was ordered to undergo his mission by a superior officer, and obeying the chain of command is a part of warfare, whether or not you're leading an attack or trying to stop one. And that's not even getting into how Schofield has to kill enemy troops along the way in order to reach the frontlines and save his fellow soldiers, and, while I'm not saying that the movie tries to portray that killing as being glorious in any way, it is necessary to do in order for him to save the lives of over a 1,000 men, including his best friend's brother, so how is that not displaying a positive accomplishment of the warfare in the film?It's befuddling because you're assuming that I'm trying to say that I don't feel 1917 is an anti-war movie on the whole because it's not as anti-war as Paths Of Glory, when all I'm doing is offering up the latter as counter-example of a film I actually consider to be anti-war, because this discussion would obviously be useless without a contrast in order to define it. My point isn't revolving around using any one film as an objective baseline for being anti-war; I don't consider Apocalypse Now to be as anti-war as Paths either, but I still consider it to be anti-war anyway, for its own reasons.

What makes me believe that the line was in the play was due to the filmmakers fearing that Karloff wouldn’t allow them to use his name and likeness, which was treated as a threat to production. Him giving them the OK, rather than it being a loving wink, doesn’t make it feel like they added it as acknowledgement just for the film version.

Then again, I can’t find anything contemporary and haven’t tracked down a script of the play to confirm so I’m just supposing at the moment.

I'm not sure about whether or not the line was in the play because the only version of the play that I've ever seen was a school play, and that was over 30 years ago. But I know that Karloff wanted to play the role in the movie, but he was under contract for the Broadway play, and they wouldn't let him out of his contract to make the movie. I think I even remember reading somewhere that he was angry that the two actresses who played Mortimer's aunts in the Broadway play were both allowed to make the movie, but he wasn't allowed.

A Christmas Carol (1984)
My third version of this movie watched this festive season. Some good performances in this modern colour version.

Tackling most of his first silent films via a boxset that my wife gave me years ago was a good way to get a good chunk of his films out of the way. I also took an online course on Hitchcock a couple of years ago and I remember I saw a good bunch that year, particularly his late 30s/early 40s stuff.

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I saw this and sincerely wondered if they were actually trying to say/do something or they were just putting some window-dressing on a tawdry, low-budget skin-flick.

I went back and forth between 5/10 and 5.5/10, and yes, even I felt ashamed watching ir.

That's an interesting fact. I didn't know that. Warner Bros. must have been chompin' at the bit for the stage run to finish!

I think that my definition of warfare is simply different from yours. I think of warfare as the state of engaging in military combat with an opposing force.

It is true that in the film a soldier following orders from a superior leads to a (possibly temporary) "net positive" in the sense that in that moment more lives are saved than lost.

But even if you count him delivering the message as a "win" (and I'd argue that the emotion I felt as he delivered the message was relief, not triumph), I don't think that it overcomes the message delivered by many characters throughout the film of "Why are we even here?"; "Look what this is doing to the land/people"; "We'll probably just die tomorrow"; and the trauma that is clearly being inflicted on the lead character in performing his actions.

I think that the actions of the main character do have a positive impact, but I don't think you can say anything positive about the warfare itself--namely the giant military conflict within he is operating. Especially because the problem he is solving--troops heading for an ambush--is itself part of the war. Without the warfare there is no ambush in the first place.

If a film showed a lot of people taking hard drugs and within that film a person saved another person from overdosing, I wouldn't say that was drug culture having a positive impact. I would say that it was an individual within that drug culture doing a positive thing for someone else. Not at all the same.