Watched last night

[Timmy_Lea]

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING: (Philip Kaufman) 1988. Runtime 166 mins.

Roger Ebert calls this "The most erotic serious film since 'Last Tango in Paris' "....its certainly a steamy, flesh ridden film definitely deserving its 18 rating...
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche & Lena Olin in a love triangle set against the backdrop of the 1968 Czechoslovakian (I had to look that one up) uprising, and using real newsreel footage which some may find disturbing....
Based on the novel by Milan Kundera this is a film that will on one level enthrall, on another arouse.....
Eroticism in its most sensual form........Recommended
9/10
Cheers
Sgt S

I remember watching this. . .

[batman]

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo .... absolutely superb in all departments, proving once again that the Scandinavians knopw how to make a superior thriller. The English language remake with Daniel Craig will have to go some to match this. Highly recommended.

[batman]

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING: (Philip Kaufman) 1988. Runtime 166 mins.

This film has always been known by me and my friends as The Unbearable Shiteness of Being .... sorry Sarge, I thought it was a right load of old cobblers.

[Timmy_Lea]

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo .... absolutely superb in all departments, proving once again that the Scandinavians knopw how to make a superior thriller. The English language remake with Daniel Craig will have to go some to match this. Highly recommended.

A very good movie, although the sequels weren't so good. Not interested in the remake. . .

[Sgt Sunshine]

I remember watching this. . .

....It must have left an impression on you then Timmy....

[Sgt Sunshine]

This film has always been known by me and my friends as The Unbearable Shiteness of Being .... sorry Sarge, I thought it was a right load of old cobblers.

....
Old cobblers never looked so good..
As you know I'm easily impressed.....and wouldn't know a truly great film if it crawled up to my shoulder & nibbled my ear lobe...
There's very very few films that I don't enjoy on some level & could count on the fingers of one hand the number of films I've not stuck out till the bitter end.....
I don't "ask" anything from a film, just take it as it comes so to speak...
Cheers
Sgt S

[dpgmel]

I watched Tony Young's Port of Escape starring Googie Withers and John McCallum, set in the London docks Mr McCallum is accused of murder and hides out on Googie's houseboat.

Obviously filmed on virtually no budget quite atmospheric and claustrophobic however a lot of the acting from the supporting cast leaves a lot to be desired.

[didi-5]

Two episodes of Sunday Night at the London Palladium (from the volume 2 disc). Tarby presenting before immense wealth went to his head. Pete and Dud. Frankie Vaughan. The Searchers. The Hollies. Peter Paul and Mary. Arthur Haynes. Pete Seeger. And of course the dancing girls (and boys!).

Re The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I saw this just once when I was fifteen. Lena Olin and that hat and that mirror is about the only thing I can remember. The political angle passed me by but the eroticism didn't.

[Sgt Sunshine]

Re The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I saw this just once when I was fifteen. Lena Olin and that hat and that mirror is about the only thing I can remember. The political angle passed me by but the eroticism didn't.

Yes I know what you mean about the scene with the hat & mirror.....
I do like a woman in a hat .....most attractive...

[Harbottle]

Friday the Thirteenth (1933). Splendid film where we are shown a group of passengers on a London bus before it is to meet with disaster and fatal casualties, but who is going to survive? We follow their lives before the fateful crash and naturally they all have a tale to tell, with an excellent cast including Ralph Richardson, Jessie Matthews, Robertson Hare, Gordon Harker and Max Miller. The mixture of drama and comedy works well (though I must confess to finding Miller trying) as does script, performances and direction in a film that feels far more modern than 1933!

[dpgmel]

For me it was Compton Bennett's Desperate Moment starring Dirk Bogarde, Mai Zetterling and all too briefly Albert Lieven in a tale of murder and manhunt in Europe post WWII.

I thought the plot was very confusing and it took me a while to work out what was happening ny whom and to whom. IMHO very muddled which was a shame as I was looking forward to this one.

[Rowdon]

I keep dipping into Frank Muir's autobiography (nice place to spend a few minutes) and thought I'd ask here for a copy of Bottoms Up (1959), based on the Muir-Norden Whack-O scripts. Unnecessary, it turned out, as it's on Youtube. Muir describes it as "a modest success, but nevertheless a success" which is nice to know, and I think it still stands up pretty well today, mainly because Jimmy Edwards is so great - unstoppable, utterly selfish, sarcastic and sadistic, relishing every line; a pleasure to watch. The rest of the film is raucous and unsentimental enough to maintain its feeling of anarchy for the 90 minutes, never sliding into mawkishness. It would be a waste of time to comment that Melvyn Hayes as a cockney geezer made up with cocoa to look like a Middle Eastern prince actually looks just as plausible as the 'real' prince when he turns up (sorry - should I have said 'Spoiler Alert'?) ... but I have time to waste, it seems. With a lovely performance by Arthur Howard as Jimmy's second (making me want to track down Norden's later "The Best House in London", not apparently on DVD) and Vanda Hudson as the matron, there's a lot to enjoy. Mainly, as I've said, Jimmy Edwards, in full control.

[wideboy]

[making me want to track down Norden's later "The Best House in London", not apparently on DVD)

It used to be shown what seemed like every week on TCM - probably in a horrible pan & scan print at that time - so somebody must have it. My initial reaction was to say don't bother unless you enjoy being tortured (my recollection of it) but in fairness I looked it up on IMDb and a number of reviewers are at least complimentary about Norden's script.

[Rowdon]

[making me want to track down Norden's later "The Best House in London", not apparently on DVD)

It used to be shown what seemed like every week on TCM - probably in a horrible pan & scan print at that time - so somebody must have it. My initial reaction was to say don't bother unless you enjoy being tortured (my recollection of it) but in fairness I looked it up on IMDb and a number of reviewers are at least complimentary about Norden's script.

Wow. Thanks - I consider myself warned. I can't believe Dennis Norden wrote anything completely unfunny, but then a good scriptwriter is not a guarantee of a good finished product. It often turns out that I've seen films I hunt down before, but I have o memory of the title anyway ...

[Rowdon]

Hogging the thread a bit here...

I just watched The Naked Truth. I know it's been mentioned a lot in these pages, and I know we've all seen it numerous times, but what a fine film it is. Great pace, great acting, great cars, great suits ... I wonder who actually approached Peter Sellers and said "We've a part here of a manipulative, exploitative star who is morally empty but whose one amazing characteristic is an astonishing gift for mimicry and a sharp sense of humour ... would you be interested Mr. Sellers?".

[dpgmel]

I watched Richard Thorpe's The Killers of Kilimanjaro, Robert Taylor plays a Railway engineer attempting to build a railroad in Kenya assisted bt Forum Favourite Anthony Newley.

Fairly predictable fare cue lots of second unit footage of wild animals and noble natives and an ageing star doesn't help matters. For me the best thing was the presence of Mr Newley who sadly doesn't sing in this one

[dremble wedge]

Coincidentally I also enjoyed the charms of a non-singing Anthony Newley as he supported Victor Mature and Leo Genn in No Time to Die, which concerns PoWs escaping a camp in the Libyan desert. Bonar Colleano, Alfred Burke and Luciana Paluzzi lend useful support. Director Terence Young, writer Richard Maibaum and producer Cubby Broccoli would shortly move on to bigger things but this is passable stuff with a mean edge to it.

[Harbottle]

Banana Ridge (1942). Written by Ben Travers and starring Robertson Hare and Alfred Drayton but despite this frankly as dull as ditchwater alas. The only joke is that Sue Long uses her little black book (having it seems slept with every lodger at her mother's boarding house ) to organise jobs for her son whose dalliances frequently lead to the sack. Two of them are of course Hare and Drayton, and well that's about it really

[Harbottle]

Fighting Stock (1935). Amusing if slight comedy where Tom Walls and Ralph Lynn fall out with neighbours while renting a country cottage on hols. Not sure if it's just me but Tom Walls seems to spend a lot of his films lusting after young flesh in a frankly rather creepy manner, I know times have changed but even so Blackmail also rears its ugly head and confusion abounds when a creepy character is after one of the ladies (...not Walls).

[batman]

Prompted by a thread elsewhere on this forum I watched William Cameron Menzies' very enjoyable B-movie horror The Maze, which is all about strange goings on in a Scottish castle. The set design is way above average for this sort of thing (unsurprising given the director) and the script and performances are also above par. The film is a bit slow in places but the wonderfully bonkers ending more than makes up for any flaws the film may have. Highly recommended.