The Last Movie You Saw On DVD or VHS or TV.

I watch a lot of old movies that people likely wouldn't care about.

Last night I finished watching Daredevil on Netflix. It was very entertaining and I highly recommend it. I know the Daredevil stories have taken place in Hell's Kitchen in NYC since he debuted in the 1960s but I found it amusing that they set a war between rival criminal organizations (including the Russians, Chinese, and Japanese) in modern day Hell's Kitchen. Last time I was there it seemed pretty gentrified and had most of the best gay clubs in NY. It's also home to Daisy May's BBQ which is ridiculously good.

Hell's Kitchen is great...although I prefer next-door-neighbor Chelsea.

The New York Waterfront is not what it used to be...and that is for the better. Hell's Kitchen was a hot, hot place at one time. You had to be one tough dude to live there.

Never saw Daredevil. May take a peek.

The Forger,(2014), This is with John Travolta as a recently released art forger who is coerced into copying a Monet at the Gardnr, switching the painting and stealing the real Monet. Its a caper film nd its a guilty pleasure. I love caper films, I love the games involved. Chritopher Plummer plays his equally felonious father. All this is done with really noble intentions.
How does it work out?

Last night I watched Auntie Mame on AMC. It was a lot of fun, ok its campy but Rosalyn Russell was terrific. I think it was made in 1958, and her wardrobe was glorious, lots of sparkle, beautifully draped fabrics, they don't make clothes like that anymore. I am not talking about fashion, her clothes were glamorous.

A few days ago I saw 'Thirty-Two-Short-Films-About-Glenn-Gould', a bizarre and wonderful mosaic of the pianio genius.

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I'm lazy in my movie postings here. That's my excuse.

Thursday after work:
Went to see Ted 2 (2015) because I had a half off coupon. Don't bother seeing this stoner comedy. A handful of semifunny jokes spread thinly through a movie do not a watchable movie make.

On a whim, decided for a palate cleanser by going to the documentary, The Wolfpack (2015).

If you're looking for something truly original and thoughtful? Get your tuchas to an art film theater PRONTO!

A movie about an isolated family of cinephiles living in the middle of NYC. A group of brothers coping with being overly sheltered from society by their father reenact famous movies which is quite impressive and funny given how little they have to make do.

I recently watched The Butler which set people to wondering at Academy Awards time why it wasn't nominated. It has an amazing cast. Generally, when a film has that many megastars, it is usually filled with phoned in performances. It was not true here, but, although the movie was based on a true story -- it should have said inspired by a true story -- it was highly fictionalized.

The inspiration came from an interview with a black man who worked as White House butler for 34 years. But, the movie changed how the family was portrayed. The man and his wife had one son, not two, but by creating a second son with a different attitude toward politics, the film created a great deal of drama, as well as a completely untrue tale.

What bother me most is that the wife of the hero -- well played by Oprah -- was depicted as an alcoholic who had an extra-marital affair. None of that was true. I feel that the woman did nothing to deserve such a representation. Particularly since her son is still alive. Granted, the names are changed . . . but . . .

The movie does contain some very real events that would probably never have been known otherwise. After JFK's assassination, Jackie gave the real man one of her husband's ties. I thought that was particularly gracious of Jackie and I am amazed that she was able to do something as meaningful at that time.

And petite Nancy Reagan -- portrayed by tall Jane Fonda -- did invite the real butler and his wife to a state dinner, another gracious gesture.

One of the stand out performances was John Cusack with a little bit of a nose extension as Richard Nixon. Alan Rickman was completely unrecognizable as Ronald Reagan. He almost got the vocal cadences right.

I also watched an older Irish film, The Snapper. My first thought was that the film almost completely defames the Irish, a people whose natural sociability and high emotions are fueled by alcohol and nearly obliterated by the Catholic church, which a friend described as the ruin of Ireland.

While the film shows how an accidental pregnancy brought a family together and changed the lives of those involved in surprising ways, this, like The Butler, troubled me.

Basically, the girl became pregnant by what many would consider a rape.

It is a troubling film in that respect and because the mother-to-be Sharon drinks to excess during her pregnancy.

Roger Ebert saw it as a film that pays tribute to the Irish love of talking . . . a trait that even Julius Caesar noticed . . . well, at least of the cousins of the Irish, the Gauls. I would add that this is ultimately about forgiveness and growing because of or in spite of the unexpected.

Yes! Do tell, Edgar!

A final note: Go see Far From the Madding Crowd. I hated the version from the sixties but this is wonderful. Am now reading the book, which followed rereading several Shakespearean plays to help me with a writing project.

What gets me is Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy, about three centuries apart, based their work on some of the same problems that we still haven't solved.

I watched Walk on the Wild Side yesterday.
Laurence Harvey ...
Capucine ...
Jane Fonda
I liked it better this time than when I saw it at the movies.

On Saturdays I watch some of the old westerns. One station shows Tim McCoy, sometimes two or three times in a row. I get a charge out of him, the way he carries himself, stiff as a board, even when being athletic. He doesn't say his lines that well. And you can pick him out of a crowd, because he wears the biggest hat. John Wayne played his younger brother in yesterday's movie.

I guess I will pop in now and again for this.

That's why I didn't want to see the new version of that. The 60s version bored the hell out of me.

Johnny Depp's Tonto was on one of the cable channels last week. The critics roundly hated it, but I began watching and I thought it was actually pretty funny. It might not have been the BEST movie ever made, but the action scenes reminded me of the stunts in Pirates I, II, and III, only with runaway trains, evil railroad barons, and damsels in distress of one sort or another. The special effects were not so obvious as they are in some movies, and I think I would watch it again if it turns up on the tube again.

I thought it was pretty good when I saw it at the cinema. I sat through it all, later in the toilets my son had to wait for me to finish emptying my bladder long after he'd washed and dried his hands.

My brother-in-law had The Fifth Element on in his "home theater" this weekend. I watched it for the upteenth time.

Loved it.

Me too
Multi-pass never gets old.