Respond to the last movie you watched

[1SO]

Sing and Like It (1934)

Until this movie, I didn't get the sweet/dumb charm of Channing Tatum. The above image of Nat Pendleton looking and acting a lot like Tatum is when it all snapped into focus. This comedy - whose plot was reworked by Woody Allen in Bullets Over Broadway - has a small amount of gold zingers, but a lot of silver. The cast is a 1930s character actor paradise: Pendleton, Edward Everett Horton, Zasu Pitts, Ned Sparks, John Qualen, Matt McHugh, Stanley Fields and Joe Sawyer
RATING: ★ ★ ★ - Okay

[Antares]

has a small amount of gold zingers, but a lot of silver. The cast is a 1930s character actor paradise: Pendleton, Edward Everett Horton, Zasu Pitts, Ned Sparks, John Qualen, Matt McHugh, Stanley Fields and Joe Sawyer

Ned Sparks just owns this script! You mention gold and it seems like every gem comes out of his mouth. It did lag a bit around the kidnap scene, but even that had a payoff. Pert Kelton also has some great lines too. Nice find, I liked it! A diamond in the rough from the pre-code era.

[1SO]

This sent me down a rabbit hole where I lined up some films featuring Sparks and Pendleton. (Today's lunch film is Lady for a Day, which I first watched too close to Pocketful of Miracles.) Sparks is the first version of Walter Matthau and it's a shame they never were from the same era, they would've been great as brothers. They can take benign dialogue and make it funny through their extremely sarcastic delivery.

Female Stage Director: Well, what do you want?
Sparks: What do you care? You ain't got it.

I love that his character's main job was translating gangster slang to common English and vice-versa.

T. Fenny Sylvester: Who's the canary what trilled the twerp?
Toots McGuire: He wants to know who sang the ditty.

[Antares]

Danny at Pre-Code.com liked it too... http://pre-code.com/sing-like-1934-review-zasu-pitts/

I don't know if you know much about Pert Kelton, but she was the original actress to play Alice Kramden in Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners. But she lost the part after she was blackballed during the HUAC hearings in the fifties. As much as I like Audrey Meadows, after hearing Kelton in this film, she would have just owned that character.

[1SO]

I was looking for that. It didn't come up under his main index.

[Antares]

I was looking for that. It didn't come up under his main index.

http://pre-code.com/the-movies/, he added this link a couple of years ago, it lists all his reviews.

[1SO]

Huh. I still had this as the Bookmark

http://pre-code.com/the-movies/wikipedia-list-of-pre-code-films/

[1SO]

The Cat's Paw (1934)

Silent film star Harold Lloyd speaks, playing a naive young lad in the big city. Raised in a Chinese missionary, he doesn't understand modern American society, its slang and its politics. This makes him a perfect candidate for a corrupt mayoral election he's expected to lose.

You ever watch a Frank Capra film? This is exactly like that, with Lloyd acting like James Stewart, Una Merkel as Jean Arthur and a host of familiar faces in familiar roles. (George Barbier, Nat Pendleton, Grace Bradley, Alan Dinehart, Grant Mitchell.) The beats are familiar - though this pre-dates Capra's most popular output - and they work, including an extreme finale that's super dark but clever.

The film is also racist. Not deliberate and not stereotyping, but showing absolute ignorance towards Chinese people and their culture. You can tell they had no idea how offensive they were being. (Lloyd's character even speaks Chinese, but is obviously dubbed.) For some this will make the film an automatic 'nope', but easily putting that outdated quality aside, this is a Discovery.
RATING: ★ ★ ★ - Good

[1SO]

Evil Dead Rise (2023)
★ ★ ★ - Okay
Sam Raimi's 3 Evil Dead films are such a carnival of invention, it feels slightly dishonest to see a film that takes the elements of the franchise seriously. The results are mundane for an Evil Dead film, even with the incredible amount of blood. (The violence isn't as bad as the New French Extreme or the 2013 remake, but it's up there.) It's too thin for its 96-minutes, but the makeup and sound are excellent, and the visuals are effectively intense.

No surprise, this enters the Horror/Thriller 1000 at #308

I'm not surprised that Scream VI enters the Horror/Thriller 1000 at #516. I expect when the corpses start to rot, it will end up below Scream 2022 (#648)

This hasn't been the case, with Scream VI only slipping down to #559

[StarCarly]

I asked ChatGPT to recommend a movie like Fear (1996). It chose The Crush, starring Cary Elwes and Alicia Silverstone. It's...not great. But I'm a sucker for Cary and his horrible American accent. This, certainly, could not be made today. Problematic is an understatement.