tick…tick…BOOM!

Internet Movie Database Movie Review

A composer/writer in New York City during the 80s struggles with The Big Questions.

It was time for the Saturday Zoom Movie, and CoyoteRambles needed to watch this to interview one of the filmmakers the next day; we were happy to oblige him!

This is a very good movie in many ways: it’s a good snapshot of a time and place, showing what it was like to be there and then. Andrew Garfield was amazing in this movie, and now I have to go back and watch his run of Spider-Man movies (I kind of missed him between Tobey Maguire and Tom Holland). And it’s a biopic; it’s fictionalized and turned into a musical version of events, but is (as far as I have read) pretty true to life….and the main character, Jonathan Larson, went on to write Rent, one of the best known musicals of recent years.

On the other hand, Mr. Otter and I don’t like Rent, so I was hesitant to see a movie about the guy who created it…but it was really good.

Go see it, the acting and musical numbers alone are worth your time.

General Della Rovere

Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews

A con man is made to impersonate a hero and finds his conscience

CoyoteRambles, Mr. Otter and I met for the Saturday Zoom Movie, and it was Mr. Otter’s choice…he had been leaning heavily toward Italian postwar cinema, and this was no exception.

The plot is standard but well done: bad guy con man makes himself the go-between communicating with the Germans running the town on one side and the families of the Gestapo’s captives on the other, taking his own cut of whatever bribes and payments are passed back and forth. Then the Gestapo makes him pretend to be the shining light of the Resistance, Della Rovere, and go to prison with other freedom fighters, hoping to get information from them.

This was good, but pretty talky for a war/betrayal/resistance movie.

The Princess Comes Across

Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews

Based on the novel A Halálkabin (“Death Cab”) by Louis Lucien Rogger

So there’s an ocean liner, and on board are:

• A Brooklyn actress pretending to be a Swedish princess (Carole Lombard)
• A dorky but adorable bandleader (Fred MacMurray)
• A blackmailer, and his victims
• An escaped killer
• Five international police detectives

And of course their paths intertwine, and hijinks ensue. This was funny and kind of charming, especially if you like Lombard or MacMurray.

Love Before Breakfast

Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews

From the short story Spinster Dinner by Faith Baldwin

Carole Lombard is pursued/stalked by a rich guy who buys her fiance’s company and sends him to Japan and his own girlfriend to Hawaii to clear the field for pursuing her…

And…that’s is literally all I can remember about this movie, except that it was pretty terrible. Much as I like Cesar Romero and Carole Lombard, just the fact that they had multiple people shuttling in and out working on the screenplay is a dead giveaway that there are major problems here.

Pass this one up unless you are a die-hard Lombard fan.

Alfie

Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews

Based on the play of the same name that was turned into a novel and a movie three years later, all by Bill Naughton.

Alfie is a freewheeling womanizer who just wants to sleep with pretty much every woman he meets, but does not want to face up to the emotional and practical consequences of his ways.

This is one of those iconic movies that I’ve heard about all my life but never seen, so when it was Saturday Zoom Movie Night and my turn to pick, this was my choice.

I’m a huge Michael Caine fan, and this was his breakout role. Plus he’s cute as a box of kittens in this movie, unbelievably young and charming. No wonder every woman in this movie wants to sleep with him!

The movie lived up to its press; it was interesting, charming in many ways, and yet infuriating, especially in modern times when woman have made so much progress against just this sort of thing…it was actually kind of hard to watch him sequentially charm all these woman, especially the ones where it was obvious they REALLY didn’t want to. The progression from his happily hopping in and out of bed with multiple women to coming to realize the cost of his lifestyle was very well done, and the ending was perfect.

Highly recommended by the Otter, even though it is hard to watch so many women being so complacent from the vantage point of this day and age…

Hands Across the Table

Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews

Two penniless gold diggers agree to help each other in pursuit of marrying someone rich, but fall for each other instead.

Aaaaand…that’s pretty much the whole movie. There’s more detail, of course, but it’s not so outstanding that that matters.

This was okay. William Powell and Carole Lombard were both good, and the storyline wasn’t awful, just not very memorable.

We’re Not Dressing

Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews

A bunch of wealthy socialites end up on a deserted island. Hijinks ensue!

This was pretty stupid, and Mr. Otter and I mocked it pretty much all the way through. The socialites are helpless and useless, spurning the lowly sailor’s (Bing Crosby) offers to show them how to do stuff, until it becomes apparent that they literally can do nothing for themselves, and give in. The girl who owned the sunken yacht falls in love with him, and they are eventually rescued.

The only bright spot in this incredibly dumb-but-not-in-a-good-way movie was the presence of George Burns and Gracie Allen as a couple of anthropologists on the other side of the island…they were, as usual, really funny. The rest of it? sink it without a trace.

Man of the World

Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews

William Powell is using a scandal sheet to blackmail men to pay him to keep stories about them unpublished…his schemes go awry when he meets Carole Lombard and promises to go straight…but of course it’s not that easy…

This was one of a boxed set of five Carole Lombard movies that Mr. Otter and I watched one week…this one was pretty good, although William Powell was less charming and more scummy than usual.

Not bad, but not memorable.

The Tomorrow War

Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews

Aliens will kill most of Earth’s population in the future so soldiers are being drafted in the present and sent to the future to fight and die…until Chris Pratt takes care of business.

OMG. This is the reason that, as much as I love time travel movies, they really should be kept out of the hands of idiots. This movie had a lot of boom and whango, as we say Chez Otter, but very little about it made sense. There were so many plot holes related to time travel that I’m not even going to go there. Mr. Otter and I spent most of the movie yelling, Why are you doing this? at the screen, and pointing out the obvious paradoxes and inconsistencies.

And I really like Chris Pratt, but not here. Even he couldn’t save this dog.

The Day The Earth Stood Still

Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews

From the short story Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates

An alien comes to earth with an ultimatum: abandon war, especially nuclear war, or the Earth will be destroyed by other alien races.

This is, of course, a legendary SF movie. My family always had the TV going on Sunday afternoons to watch whatever cheesy old SF and horror movies were playing (back in the days when you had to watch whatever the Television Gods decreed, rather than choosing for yourself.) This was a big favorite, and my sister had a huge crush on Michael Rennie, who I will admit is easy on the eye.

I saw bits and pieces of it, and of course Klaatu Barada Nicto is a famous catchphrase…but I really don’t remember ever having actually watched it all the way through, until Mr. Otter mentioned it and I said, I’ve never seen it. Well, that was a gap in my cultural literacy that got addressed pretty quickly!

For what it was, a preachy cold war movie about eschewing violence, it was pretty good. The special effects weren’t bad for the time, and the story, although pretty far-fetched (none of his abilities was ever explained, he could just do all this random stuff. And he was exactly like Earth humans…hm.) it all held together pretty well.

The story was interesting enough not to be draggy, and of course the ending, “The decision rests with you…” was great.

The Otter liked this classic and was happy not to be disappointed by it!