Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

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And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool!
09-20-18
Originally Posted by Citizen Rules

Bachelor Mother (1939)

Director: Garson Kanin
Writers: Norman Krasna (screen play), Felix Jackson (story)
Cast: Ginger Rogers, David Niven, Charles Coburn
Genre: Comedy, Romance
"An unemployed woman discovers an abandoned baby on the steps of an orphanage, and accepts an offer to take responsibility for the child in return for a job."

++

I thought Bachelor Mother was much better than the 1956 remake Bundle of Joy. Surprisingly, David Niven and Ginger Rogers had better chemistry together than Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds did, even though Fisher and Reynolds were married in real life.



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And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool!
09-20-18
Originally Posted by Citizen Rules

Gunga Din (1939)

Director: George Stevens
Writers: Joel Sayre & Fred Guiol (screen play), Rudyard Kipling (original poem)
Cast: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Victor McLaglen, Sam Jaffe
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, War

"In 19th century India, three British soldiers and a native Indian waterbearer must stop a secret mass revival of the murderous cult before it can rampage across the land."


Gunga Din is one of the few Cary Grant movies that I never had any interest in seeing.



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Goddess of Winter and Cold Hearts
09-20-18
Originally Posted by pahaK
I found it pretty much the same way (and used it to build reputation/notoriety by nominating it for the first 1930s HoF). After @Citizen Rules mentioned pre-code on some message I went Googling for the most infamous films of the 1930s and Child Bride was among them
I found a review on a website and looked at other reviews there and saved it in my fav...it had some weird films on there.
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09-20-18
Originally Posted by Citizen Rules
I scoured the internet looking for that movie. Couldn't find it anywhere. And yet it gets high praise in list of must see Gloria Grahame films. If it's on Youtube I missed it. Finally I found it at Netflix DVD and it came on a double movie (2 movies on 1 DVD). It's worth watching if you can find it.
Right you are, bro. It wasn't available from any of my sources. I don't have Filmstruck yet, but I'm weakening towards trying it out. I guess they offer 30 days free to see if one likes it. I'd watch movies from the '30s thru the '50s every night. But my wife said she'd watch only 2 per week.. So it would work out to a buck a flick (@ $8/month).

I may check the local libraries. Then again, I may not.

~Doc



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ergh...snowballs
09-20-18


Not as a Stranger (1955)
Director: Stanley Kramer
Writers: Edna Anhalt & Edward Anhalt (screenplay), Morton Thompson (novel)
Cast: Olivia de Havilland, Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, Broderick Crawford, Charles Bickford
Genre: Melodrama

A self absorbed man from a poor broken home dreams of becoming a great doctor. He's willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal. Including marrying an older nurse for her money, so he can complete medical school. CR


Acclaimed director Stanley Kramer who gave us such great films as: The Defiant Ones (1958), Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgement at Nuremberg (1961), to name a few...made his directorial debut with a edgy melodrama, Not As a Stranger (1955).

Bashed on the best selling novel of 1954 by author Morton Thompson. The movie tells a hard hitting story about an icy cold man, who believes he has a higher calling to be a great doctor. Played equally icy by Robert Mitchum. In his quest to become a doctor and save lives, he's willing to delude an older nurse who fears she will become a spinster. Dark haired beauty Olivia de Havilland sports platinum blonde hair and does a fair Swedish accent as the Swedish born American nurse. Olivia comes across as sincere and caring, which makes the austere Doctor seem all the more icy.

His friend and fellow medical student, is played by Frank Sinatra. As a doctor Sinatra is more concerned about making big money so that he can drive a Cadillac, than saving lives. When he performs a dangerous and ill advised cosmetic surgery, Mitchum rips into him and demands he report his incompetence to the medical board. Mitchum's doctor who's based on the novel, seems to come from a real personality type, that of a highly intelligent person with Asperger syndrome.


The film is knee high in medical scenes including the very first time an actual open heart surgery was shown in a movie...and it's a close up of the actual heart!


Sinatra is OK in this, though he's not a stand out. Gloria Grahame has a smaller role as a wealthy woman whom the doctor encounters and becomes smitten with. Stand out roles are hand;ed by Broderick Crawford and Charles Bickford who dish out their usually caricatures and do a damn good job at it too!

Some have called this a film noir...no way. Not As a Stranger is part of what was becoming known as social conscious melodramas. These types of film pushed the envelope in the 1950s, paving the way for more frank movies in the decades to come.

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Last edited by Citizen Rules; 09-21-18 at 12:04 AM.



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ergh...snowballs
09-20-18
Originally Posted by gbgoodies
I thought Bachelor Mother was much better than the 1956 remake Bundle of Joy. Surprisingly, David Niven and Ginger Rogers had better chemistry together than Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds did, even though Fisher and Reynolds were married in real life.
and they were divorced...I've seen Bundle of Joy, it's fun but Ginger is much funnier than Debbie.

Originally Posted by gbgoodies
Gunga Din is one of the few Cary Grant movies that I never had any interest in seeing.
It's like Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom. Some say it inspired that movie.



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ergh...snowballs
09-21-18


2036 Origin Unknown (2018)
Director: Hasraf Dulull
Writers: Hasraf Dulull (story), Gary Hall
Cast: Katee Sackhoff, Steven Cree, Julie Cox
Genre: Sci Fi

After the mysterious failure of a manned mission to Mars, which killed the CEO of a powerful space corporation that sent the mission, his oldest daughter takes charge of the company and puts an A.I. (artificial intelligence) computer in charge of the next mission set for 2036. Her younger sister is the only person at space mission control room, she works with the A.I....and her sister via satellite. They argue over what the discovering of a cube on Mars means and mankind could become extinct. CR


Low budget indie sci-fi that for most of it's run time has only one person on screen, Katee Sackhoff. The movie has literally one set, the space mission control room that's shown in those two above photos. And that's just about it. Occasionally she talks to her sister who's the new CEO, via satellite. Oh there's a couple shots in a non descriptive hallway with two very brief appearances by former employees. And then the film relays on B grade, CG to fill out the rest of the air time. Which makes for movie making thrift store style.



The thing is I liked the first half of the film thanks to Katee Sackhoff. She's interesting and even when she's lecturing the A.I. or trying to get it to laugh, she's interesting to watch. It's the little things she does with her facial expressions that keep this film from going sub zero.

The big thing is the discover of a cube on Mars that can spin and teleport itself to Earth...that was lame, but not as lame as having the cube look like a Borg cube from Star Trek TNG.





The ending gets so muddled in it's attempt to be so deep that it becomes a dull impression of classics like 2001.




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Last edited by Citizen Rules; 09-21-18 at 08:54 PM.



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ergh...snowballs
09-21-18

Ride Out for Revenge (1957)

Director: Bernard Girard
Writers: Burt Arthur (novel), Norman Retchin (screenplay)
Cast: Rory Calhoun, Gloria Grahame, Lloyd Bridges
Genre: Western

"When an Indian chief is murdered in a hateful town, a sympathizing ex marshal tries to stop the Indians from attacking for revenge."


Ride Out for Revenge is what would be called a 'matinee movie'. Those were B budget movies made to show as a second half of a double bill, or made for Sunday afternoon matinee showings, with school age kids as the primary audience. You can usually tell those matinee movies because there shorter in length, usually just over an hour. And they have more simplistic story telling, with the good guys literally wearing white hats and the bad guys in the cliche black hats. The story telling is made simple for a younger audience and these films take big liberties with leaps of faith in how the story progresses. In other words don't look for deep meaning or stirring character development in Ride Out for Revenge.



What you do get is a stirring social commentary about the mistreatment of Indians (Native Americans) by the U.S. government and military.
It's 1868, on the Indian reservation in the Dakotas and the Chief and his son walk into town to ask for food, blankets and horses as the military has left them with nothing and there starving. The army commander (Lloyd Bridges) is a angry drunk who's driven by his own cowardice to hate the Indians. He orders one his men to shoot at them to scare them away, instead the Chief is killed. Only one man is willing to stand up for the Indians and their rights and that's the town's marshal (Rory Calhoun), problem is the town is just as racist as the army commander so they demand the sheriff resign and turns over his badge.


Left to right: Gloria Grahame as the woman who loves the sheriff but has nothing but hate in her heart for the Indians. Rory Calhoun as the marshal who tries to keep the town from igniting into a war. And to the left is Joanne Gilbert as the Native American Indian who loves the marshal and is torn between her people and the man she loves.


So basically the film goes on and it's about how hate of a people can cause that people to hate back and then innocent people get hurt. And that's a valuable message. Like I said the film has a good message, just not a well done script.



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And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool!
09-22-18
Originally Posted by Citizen Rules
and they were divorced...I've seen Bundle of Joy, it's fun but Ginger is much funnier than Debbie.
They were divorced in 1959. They were still married in 1956.



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Dismember
09-24-18
Grats CR - who knows I might even go read one of them
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ergh...snowballs
09-24-18

Phoenix (2014)

Director: Christian Petzold
Writers: Christian Petzold (screenplay), Hubert Monteilhet (novel)
Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf
Genre: Historical Drama
Language: German

"A disfigured Holocaust survivor sets out to determine if the man she loved betrayed her trust."

I really liked this intelligently made, somber and poignant look at the vastly altered life of a returning Holocaust survivor.

I'm so glad that this was a slower paced, introspective look from the 'inside'. The 'inside view' would be our view, as we go hand in hand with the brutalized and disfigured Nelly...We see, what she sees and experiences, as Nelly attempts to return to her life and come to grips with the vast changes that the war has brought.



Those changes are in the distant attitudes of the people around her, and on the streets of a bombed out Berlin, where the infrastructure has broken down and people desperately live hand to mouth. An even bigger change is on Nelly's face that has been destroyed by the Nazi's and rebuilt by a skilled surgeon.

Inside Nelly is the biggest change of all, or perhaps inside she doesn't want to change and needs to pretend she can still have her old life back with her husband. She's complex and the pain on her face and in her mannerism speak volumes. She moves like the walking dead, like someone back from the hell of a concentration camp. The actress Nina Hoss, is really talented.

The ending was so well done, at first it looked like it was going to end on a predicable note with the gun in Nelly's pocket coming into play. Instead the film rises far above the average and gives a truly powerful ending, which arises from subtly, impressive.

My kind of movie!

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ergh...snowballs
09-24-18
Originally Posted by Chypmunk
Grats CR - who knows I might even go read one of them
Or proof read them

I've been working on fixing broken photo links and trying to spot spelling/grammar errors. I started at the 1st review and I've only made it a little ways, so far. It's funny how different my reviews were back at the start of this thread.

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