Recent Viewings, Part 2

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Glass Bottom Boat" (1966)
A ditzy tour guide (Doris Day) at an aerospace company romances the company's founder (Rod Taylor), which leads to suspicions that she might be a Russian spy. Wacky hi-jinks ensue.
A silly, badly dated Cold War rom-com/spy spoof that gets by mainly on the charms of its cutie-pie leading lady and a supporting cast of familiar faces that includes Paul Lynde, Dick Martin ("Laugh-In"),  and a young Dom DeLuise. Skip it.

[indianasmith]

PRIMITIVE WAR (2025) - JURASSIC WORLD meets APOCALYPSE NOW in a fast-paced, gory thriller that combines an excellent war movie with a better dinosaur movie than the last few entries in the JW franchise!   A special commando team is sent into the jungles of Vietnam to find some missing green berets and instead encounters deadly dinosaurs, a morphine-addicted paleontologist, and a mad Russian physicist who is ripping holes through time and letting dinosaurs overrun the jungles of Vietnam.  What a wild ride!  Great dino effects, great gore, good character development - a solid movie all around! 5/5

[M.10rda]

"The Glass Bottom Boat" (1966)
 a supporting cast of familiar faces that includes Paul Lynde, Dick Martin ("Laugh-In"),  and a young Dom DeLuise. Skip it.

Skip Paul Lynde?! You've made it very difficult for me now! 

[FatFreddysCat]

Skip Paul Lynde?! You've made it very difficult for me now! 

Paul doesn't have a very big part, so I wouldn't recommend sitting thru this just for his few minutes of screen time.

...but it's free on Tubi if you just can't resist. :D

[M.10rda]

Say, do you ever want to watch a movie from 1942 where Humphrey Bogart plays a fast-talking tough guy standing up against the Nazis, and it co-stars Peter Lorre and Conrad Veidt, and also Bogie has actual chemistry w/ his chilly European leading lady? Me too! Fortunately for you and me there's

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT (1942):
...Which I presume only exists as a speedy thrown-together cash-in on CASABLANCA's success, though maybe it was made first, who knows/has time to Google it? I won't pretend that it's actually a better movie than CASABLANCA, but indeed Bogie looks like he's genuinely enjoying being onscreen w/ leading lady Kaaren Verne (?who?), unlike that cold fish they stuck him with in that other flick from '42.

Bogie plays a "Broadway producer" in NYC, which might be one of the screenplay's ideas of a joke, as he looks like an independently wealthy community benefactor (ahem) who surrounds himself w/ other shady tough guys. He's roused to action when fifth-column creep Lorre bumps off Bogie's preferred baker, leaving Bogie bereft of his favorite cheesecake.  Lorre works for Big Bad Veidt, who orchestrates an underground network of Nazi terrorists set to wreak havoc on the Big Apple, with the help of no-affect high society ice princess (Dame) Judith Anderson (kind of a classier Kristi Noem ). Verne is a German dame haplessly caught up in the intrigue, who sings a Johnny Mercer tune that lends the films its title.

True to that title, the movie's action mostly (and somewhat improbably) covers one long night of adventure. There is a lot more action than in CASABLANCA or many other crime films of the period, including a pretty good brawl on a warehouse lift and even a big explosion at the end. Somewhat less favorably, ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT is often classified as a comedy. There's a ton of snappy repartee, some of it legitimately very funny and a lot of it unnecessary and sometimes tiresome. It spreads way too thin in the final act, where Bogie and his sidekick have to pretend to be German agents presenting their report to a big basement full of other Nazis, which goes on forever and is neither plausible nor amusing. (Insert gif here of Brad Pitt as Aldo Rain repeatedly slurring "Enzo Gorlami" for Christoph Waltz' amusement.)

But! It's cool seeing Veidt in a much beefier English-language/talkie role than Strasser from CASABLANCA - he's less showy (natch) than in his youthful silent days but he still commands the screen. And of course there is Lorre, one of film's Best Actors with one of film history's Worst Agents. As in many other movies of the era, he explodes into the film and instantly threatens to take it over, then gets sidelined w/ trivial marginalia for most of the rest of the running time. Nevertheless ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT is as good as an example as any for film students to study Lorre's clockwork precise control of his facial features, docile and dead-eyed one millisecond then seething with menace the next and back again.

Bogart also does very well with a much more fun role than (frankly, with apologies) Rick. Kaaren Verne is cute and plucky at times, bland at others, but seems to be a serious actress remaining committed to her character's circumstances... and at the end, I definitely believed she was hot for Bogie. Now Bogie, a cool cucumber who rarely appeared "hot" for anyone onscreen besides Bacall, doesn't exactly give passionate love affair vibes for Verne, but he also doesn't seem like he's eager to be whisked away from her by a diminutive moustachioed Frenchman.

A young Jackie Gleason and a quote-unquote "young" Phil Silvers (who basically looks the same as he did as Bilko) show up in a few scenes as Bogie accomplices. There's also a small supporting role played by a guy named Edward Brophy, who looks pretty much exactly like Colin Ferrell as the Penguin. 

3/5

Besides the acting, ATTN is of historic interest for its relationship to CASABLANCA but also its snapshot of WW2-era Stateside political realness. At a key moment Veidt tries to convince Bogart that he is essentially ethically and ideologically equivalent to the Nazis. Bogie replies "Don't kid yourself - I've been a registered Democrat since I was old enough to vote." Ahem.   

[lester1/2jr]

Ninja Hunter (1987) - This one's got everything: Wu Tang vs Shaolin, ninjas, cute kung fu girls, and even some sort of toxic magical undead boxer guy at one point. A great movie to watch when you are trying to figure out what movie you want to watch!

4.25/ 5