What Classics Did You See Last Week (January 4–January 10)
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unex — 2 months ago(January 11, 2026 01:15 PM)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) - Rewatch. It sort of reminds me of The Wages of Fear. Desperate ex-pats looking to score big, with Dobbs and Curtin kind of like Jo and Mario. I couldn't say which one is better. They're both examples of what I consider perfect or near perfect films. Except maybe I don't quite buy the ending of this one. It's not how I would react.
Across the Pacific (1942) - Another John Huston movie with Humphrey Bogart and also Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet so a sort of Maltese Falcon reunion. Most of the movie is an entertaining enough lightweight spy thriller but the ending felt tacked on. There is an exposition dump and a rushed resolution. The attack on Pearl Harbor forced them to change the script which was originally about just such an attack.
Anna Christie (1930) - An adaptation of a Eugene O'Neill play. Greta Garbo in her first talkie, so it's a shame the audio is such poor quality that I had to turn on subtitles. Marie Dressler plays an alcoholic tramp so well I wonder if she got sloshed for the role. Not bad but not a must watch, especially with the audio issues. -
spiderwort — 2 months ago(January 12, 2026 02:21 PM)
I haven't seen it in ages, but I really loved
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
. And you're so right about it's near perfection.
And I know I saw
Across the Pacific
once upon a time, but I don't remember it very well, so I really appreciate your comments about it.
Haven't seen
Anna Christie
, though I did read the play. It's one I've been meaning to see for ages, but just haven't gotten around to it. Don't know when I will, though I know it's an important film to see. Hopefully I will one of these days… -
sheetsadam1 — 2 months ago(January 11, 2026 02:13 PM)
Only one this week:
The Soul of Youth (1920, William Desmond Taylor)- As I've stated elsewhere, I'm far from an expert on American cinema of the silent era. While I'm familiar a lot with the comedic talent of the period and some of the works of major directors like Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith, I find the European cinema of that time to be a lot more interesting on average (and German cinema in particular). But I recently read a book on the still officially unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor and wanted to watch one of his films. And it's a compelling enough social drama, if a bit heavy handed at times. Based on his work here, he seems to have been a very competent director and it's a shame that much of his work is now lost. Is it better or worse than the typical American film of 1920? That's a question I'm not qualified to answer and so I'll refrain from assigning it a rating.
Draft Barron Trump
- As I've stated elsewhere, I'm far from an expert on American cinema of the silent era. While I'm familiar a lot with the comedic talent of the period and some of the works of major directors like Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith, I find the European cinema of that time to be a lot more interesting on average (and German cinema in particular). But I recently read a book on the still officially unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor and wanted to watch one of his films. And it's a compelling enough social drama, if a bit heavy handed at times. Based on his work here, he seems to have been a very competent director and it's a shame that much of his work is now lost. Is it better or worse than the typical American film of 1920? That's a question I'm not qualified to answer and so I'll refrain from assigning it a rating.
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spiderwort — 2 months ago(January 12, 2026 02:12 PM)
Haven't seen this, sheets, but really appreciate your comments about it. You encouraged me to want to watch it, though I doubt that I ever will. But it sounds really interesting. And I completely forgot about Taylor's murder. One of those tragic moments from the silent era.
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PygmyLion — 2 months ago(January 11, 2026 04:57 PM)
The Last Flight
1931 Richard Barthelmess, David Manners, Johnny Mack Brown, Helen Chandler - 4 Fliers at the end of WWI decide not to go home and hang around Paris, then move on to Lisbon. ***1/2
Easy Living
1937 Jean Arthur, Ray Milland, Edward Arnold. Screwball comedy. J.B.Ball(Arnold) throws his wife's sable coat out the window and it lands on Mary Smith's (Arthur) head - leading to an association between them. ***- These are 2 B-westerns of length about 50 minutes. Compared to a full A movie they come up a bit short, but come up okay when compared to TV Westerns:
Blazing Bullets
1951 - Johnny Mack Brown, Lois Hall.
Colorado Ambush
1951 - Johnny Mack Brown, Christine McIntyre, Lois Hall, Lyle Talbot.
Angel and the Badman
1947 - John Wayne, Gail Russell, Harry Carey, Bruce Cabot - Somewhat bad Quirt Evans (Wayne) is nursed back to heath by a quaker family with a beautiful daughter Penelope (Russell) and slowly changes his ways. ***1/2
So Red the Rose
1935 - Margaret Sullavan, William Connolly, Randolph Scott. Dir: King Vidor. This movie resembles the first half of
Gone with the Wind
. A family living on a large plantation in Mississippi, loses just about everything in the Civil War - ***1/2
Judge Priest
1934 - Will Rogers, Tom Brown, Anita Louise. Dir: John Ford. In a small southern Kentucky town in the 1890's, Judge Priest (Rogers) dispenses justice. ***
Moonrise
1948 - Dane Clark, Gail Russell, Allyn Joslyn, Rex Ingram, Ethyl Barrymore. Dir: Frank Borzage. In a small town, Danny Hawkins (Clark) has trouble dealing with the fact that his father had been hanged. ***
You Can't Take It With You
1938 - Jimmy Stewart, Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, Edwaard Arnold. Dir: Frank Capra - An eccentric family led by Lionel Barrymore refuses to sell his property for real estate development. ***1/2
- These are 2 B-westerns of length about 50 minutes. Compared to a full A movie they come up a bit short, but come up okay when compared to TV Westerns:
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spiderwort — 2 months ago(January 12, 2026 02:06 PM)
You had quite a good week, PL. I haven't seen all of those, but have seen and am particularly fond of
The Angel and the Badman
(a long time favorite),
Easy Living
and
You Can't Take It With You
. And I agree with all your ratings.
So Red the Rose
and
The Last Flight
sound really interesting, so thanks for the introductions. I'll keep them in mind, but lord knows when I'll be able to watch them. -
spiderwort — 2 months ago(January 13, 2026 03:23 PM)
I first saw that film when I was a teenager, fell in love with it then, and have loved it since. It is a very good, overlooked and underrated western. And I really liked Gail Russell in it. She left us too soon.
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PygmyLion — 2 months ago(January 13, 2026 04:52 PM)
Gail Russell is pretty nice in
Moonrise
too.
I think those are the only 2 movies that I have seen Russell in.
7 Men from Now
(1956) with Randolph Scott and Lee Marvin sounds like an interesting Western. The 2 "Our Hearts" movies might be fun to watch. -
PygmyLion — 2 months ago(January 13, 2026 06:07 PM)
It sounds like Gail Russell had problems with Alcoholism.
It reminds me a lot of a cousin of mine who died at 41 from alcoholism about 30 years ago. There were about 20-30 empty half-gallon vodka bottles in his closet. He had been a chef but during his last few years, he had lost his job due to his problem. He also seemed to have some underlying unhappiness about him.
Video on Gail Russell: -
spiderwort — 2 months ago(January 14, 2026 02:10 AM)
Yes, it's a sad story, indeed. And I'm sorry about your cousin. Thanks for the film. I'll get to it soon, unless it's too heartbreaking.
Oh, and another film Gail Russell made that I highly recommend is
The Uninvited
(1944), starring Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, and Donald Crisp. Very well done. -
Rufus-T — 2 months ago(January 11, 2026 09:06 PM)
One Battle After Another (2025)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30144839/
Possibly the most acclaimed movie of the award season. Two extreme sides of society against each other. One side cause chaos, and the other side carried heavy prejudice. A military man played by Sean Penn wanted to join the high echelon of the prejudice group. He was being rumored to be impure, so he went on to clean up his mess. The movie started off with a low character white man played by Leonardo DiCaprio met up with a belligerent black woman, played by Teyana Taylor, who is part of a resistant group that starts up rally and riots. The movie quite chaotic in the first part, which I was not crazy about. The second part is where I thought the strength of the movie, which took place 16 years after the first part. The last part was lots of chasing with many of the shot just showing the driver inside the car. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and based on a novel by Thomas Pynchon called "Vineland", this may be the best chance for Paul Thomas Anderson to win the direction Oscar. Not a perfect movie with some part not making sense, but it was an intense movie with many humor and strong performance from Sean Penn and from Benicio Del Toro who played a martial art teachers. This would have been a 2nd tier movies in the older days, say last century. Nowadays, it is treated as one of the best.
Weapons (2025)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26581740/
One day the elementary school teacher go to her class and only find one student showed up. This happened only to her class and the mystery of where are the other students is the core of the movie. The movie came in with a child narrator and broke into 6 parts, with each part focuses on one of the character who is related to the mystery. Directed by Zach Cregger, this is not just a mystery, but a horror. There were some very gory scene, more in a comic way like Shaun of the Dead. I think I chuckled quite a bit. With each part, a little bit more was being revealed. The middle parts, one may wonder what the characters have to do with the mystery, but they do. I thought the story and the arrangement was a very well crafted story, though some scenes were over the top ridiculous. Amy Madigan probably is the most well-known of the performers. She was wickedly good. No wonder all the buzzes surrounded her in the award season. Julia Garner was decent as the lead playing the teacher of the class.
Autumn Sonata (1978)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077711/
I've been wanted to see this Ingmar Bergman movie especially reading about the wonderful performance from Ingrid Bergman. This was Ingrid Bergman's final theatrical role. She has one more TV role, "A Woman Called Golda", after this. A woman, played by Liv Ullmann, visited by her pianist mother, played by Ingrid Bergman. Much of the movie was conversation between the two, bringing up old wound, especially the mother hardly around being on tour when the woman was a child. The movie came off like a play, though we see short flashback image of certain scenes. Otherwise, it is just much talk with some very emotional intense lines. Two other characters in the movie, the husband played by Halvar Björk, and the debilitated younger sister with trouble speaking and moving around, played by Lena Nyman. Like most Ingmar Bergman, surface level entertainment, don't expect much. Deep existential dialogues, plentiful. -
spiderwort — 2 months ago(January 12, 2026 01:33 PM)
Rufus, I haven't seen
Autumn Sonata
in ages, but I loved it when I did see it. Now you've made me want to see it again.
And as I noted in my post below, I'm working on
One Battle After Another
, but I'm having a lot of trouble with it. I'm only about half way through and still struggling. But I really appreciated your comments about it. -
Rufus-T — 2 months ago(January 13, 2026 07:00 PM)
Autumn Sonata
is heavy stuff. Very well written. I appreciate Ingmar Bergman a lot.
I did have a hard time for me to get through the early part of [
b]One Battle After Another
. Not an exceptional movie, but I think being very topical make it an acclaimed movie.
Regarding your review on
Sinners
, "disappointment" was the word I used in my review back in October. Overblown first half.
Glad you finally got to see
Frankenstein
. Though I did not think it was great, there were good parts. Many recent movies are like that, looks good, but poorly arranged. Like
Sinners
, they could have chopped off about 15-30 min, particularly the beginning. Still, it was much better than the abomination remake from the 90s. -
spiderwort — 2 months ago(January 14, 2026 01:59 AM)
Yes, it's true about
Autumn Sonata
. Heavy but meaningful stuff, but then most Ingmar Bergman films are, aren't they? And Ingrid Berman and Liv Ullmann were great in it.
Glad we agree, more or less, about
Sinners
. And, like you, I didn't think
Frankenstein
was great, but there were some very good elements in it. Glad I didn't see the abomination from the 90s. Didn't even know it existed.
And now let me address one of my major complaints in general: most films these days are just too long! I have an Oscar nominated screenwriter friend who watches films to nominate for the Oscars, and he calls me every couple of days to complain about how long films are these days. I can't remember which film he'd just watched, but a couple of days ago he called to complain about that one, saying it was a 2 and a half hour long film with a story that really could have been told in 30 minutes. I absolutely agree with him about so many of the scripts these days that go on an on, to their own detriment (and my despair).
Let's go back to the old days, I say, when a spectacle could run over two hours or close to three, and that was okay, because the script justified it. But those were the exceptions. Now almost everything seems too long for no good reason.
Oh, I just looked up
Autumn Sonata
to check its time: 1 hour and 39 minutes! I can live with! I know, of course, that Bergman did make a couple of long films like
Fanny and Alexander
, but going though his credits on IMDb, most of his films are under two hours. And we both know that he knew how to tell a great story in that time frame.
My screenwriter friend is convinced that it's because directors these days aren't reined in by the studios as they were in the old days, and their egos let them run wild. Whatever it is, I wish they'd come to their senses and do the right thing in telling their stories.
End of rant. Thanks for listening. -
Rufus-T — 2 months ago(January 14, 2026 07:35 PM)
One reviewer called
One Battle After Another
pretentious and bloated. The problem with the long film may not be the length, but its quality. If it is a good movie, time doesn't matter.
I remember when watching 3 1/2 hours of
The Right Stuff
or
Titanic
in the cinema, it went by so fast. Whereas,
Sinners
and
One Battle After Another
and many recently highly praised movies, there were parts that were ordeal to get through. So much fluff in the modern movies. The problem piled up when getting up there in age and patience is getting thin.
Fanny and Alexander
was an outstanding film. It didn't feel long at all. There are many other outstanding long films. Martin Scorsese made two recently, T
he Irishman
and
Killers of the Flower Moon
.
The Brutalist
was on the way to be great, but the 2nd half I started to notice time. There are many 2 hours films from recent years that felt like 4 hours. I know many love
Nomadland
. Watching that to me felt like an eternity. I am somewhat cautious about the upcoming highly anticipated
The Odyssey
releasing this summer. -
spiderwort — 2 months ago(January 15, 2026 01:56 AM)
I think we are basically in complete agreement, although I confess that I chose not to watch
The Irishman, Killers of the Flower Moon
and
The Brutalist
because of their lengths (obviously didn't nominate or vote those years). And my screenwriter friend felt the same way you did about
The Brutalist
, so I'm glad I didn't waste my time with that. And I also felt that
Nomadland
went on too long. You're so right: it comes down to the script, which is what my writer friend keeps complaining about. If the script works, the film works. But so many of the scripts these days just don't.