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Movies 52 - 1917: Sonic the Bad Boys of Prey

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Wuthering Heights, the movie, is, objectively, cloying dreck.

Apparently the book is a profound and excruciating exploration of physical and emotional abuse, incest, rape, boorishness, adolescent posturing, violence, rage, stupidity, and self delusion, and if so every high school student should be taught it as a lesson that humans should shut up until they are 40.
 
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Today I watched a wretchedly awful 1960s spy thriller called The Billion Dollar Brain. It's terrible in just about every possible way. Except for the plot, for reasons you will see shortly.

Spoiler:

Ed Begley Sr. is a billionaire Texas oilman and general who has a plan to bring down the USSR. He has had Karl Malden running a spy and resistance operation in Latvia. Hundreds of operatives have been spending enormous amounts of petrodollars gathering intelligence and preparing a Latvian fifth column to rise up in a coordinated revolt coinciding with an attack Begley will launch to decapitate the Red Army occupiers. This apparently spontaneous groundswell of grass roots Latvian support will them embolden other oppressed populations throughout the USSR to revolt.

Except, Malden has been ripping off Begley by personally embezzling the budget and payroll for the project. There aren't any operatives or intelligence. There is no fifth column. Malden has simply been writing wildly optimistic, utterly fictitious reports back to Begley's electronic brain. Those farcical inputs then drive the brain to concoct an attack strategy and predict victory. When fellow spy Michael Caine gets wise to Begley, he just cuts him in for half.

Sound familiar?
 
Watching the third of a Gothic trilogy from TCM:
  • Wuthering Heights: as noted, a hideously bad Hollywood punishment for Olivier's sins, from the grotesque albeit genius novel
  • Dragonwyck: Vincent Price leans on scenery as Gene Tierney burns it to the f-cking ground
  • Jane Eyre: Joan Fontaine gets her teeth kicked in for a solid hour and then endures worse -- the Ur goth rom com.
 
I have two documentaries to recommend, both running on HBO right now.

The first is No Accident, which is a behind-the-scenes look at, primarily, the lawyers who prosecuted the civil case against the alt-right defendants following the Charlottesville protests and violence.

The film is a bit dry in places, because watching lawyers do day to day lawyer stuff is fairly boring. It is also harmed by the fact that it was going on in the midst of the Covid pandemic, so access to things like court hearings was extremely limited.

But in terms of how the lawsuit came about, and how the lawyers decided to prosecute it, was interesting. It also isn't real long. One thing that I was struck by is that the plaintiff's side was obviously well-funded. There was a brief reference to an "institute" that was "backing" the case for purposes of exposing the alt-right activities, and that seems to have been the case. I'd love to read or hear from plaintiff's counsel about how much the plaintiffs spent making the case go. It was definitely a ton of money. It is pretty clear from the film that the case was not about any sort of recovery for the victims, but really about exposing the activities of many of the leaders of the alt-right movement, and I think everyone involved was pretty candid about that.

I'd say it is worth a watch.

The second film is Last Stop Larrimah. I'm only going to give you the premise of the movie because I don't want to hand out any spoilers. Basically, the premise is this.

Larrimah is an extremely tiny town, literally in the middle of the Australian outback. As of the date of the events giving rise to the movie, 2017, the population was 11 people. The town itself consists of a "hotel," which more importantly, contains the town pub. The rest of the town is a series of corrugated steel huts that serve as the homes for the residents. It's the kind of town where even some rural West Virginians might take a look and decide, "pass."

The townspeople live the same life each day. They get up, go down to the pub, and "get p i s s e d up" as one of the residents says, then sit around and insult and argue with one another. Then, they either pass out in the bar, or stumble home, only to get up and repeat it the next day.

In December of 2017, one of the residents turns up missing. For reasons explained in the movie, he is presumed dead. There are 10 suspects. You get to meet all of them, in all their beer swilling glory.

The movie is about the effort taken to figure out what happened and who did it. And, it's also just a glimpse into another world.
 
Does it take place in Walkabout Creek cause that is what it sounds like ;^)

I saw it pop up on Max I might give it a go.
 
SJHovey said:
I have two documentaries to recommend, both running on HBO right now.

The first is No Accident, which is a behind-the-scenes look at, primarily, the lawyers who prosecuted the civil case against the alt-right defendants following the Charlottesville protests and violence.

The film is a bit dry in places, because watching lawyers do day to day lawyer stuff is fairly boring. It is also harmed by the fact that it was going on in the midst of the Covid pandemic, so access to things like court hearings was extremely limited.

But in terms of how the lawsuit came about, and how the lawyers decided to prosecute it, was interesting. It also isn't real long. One thing that I was struck by is that the plaintiff's side was obviously well-funded. There was a brief reference to an "institute" that was "backing" the case for purposes of exposing the alt-right activities, and that seems to have been the case. I'd love to read or hear from plaintiff's counsel about how much the plaintiffs spent making the case go. It was definitely a ton of money. It is pretty clear from the film that the case was not about any sort of recovery for the victims, but really about exposing the activities of many of the leaders of the alt-right movement, and I think everyone involved was pretty candid about that.

I'd say it is worth a watch.

The second film is Last Stop Larrimah. I'm only going to give you the premise of the movie because I don't want to hand out any spoilers. Basically, the premise is this.

Larrimah is an extremely tiny town, literally in the middle of the Australian outback. As of the date of the events giving rise to the movie, 2017, the population was 11 people. The town itself consists of a "hotel," which more importantly, contains the town pub. The rest of the town is a series of corrugated steel huts that serve as the homes for the residents. It's the kind of town where even some rural West Virginians might take a look and decide, "pass."

The townspeople live the same life each day. They get up, go down to the pub, and "get p i s s e d up" as one of the residents says, then sit around and insult and argue with one another. Then, they either pass out in the bar, or stumble home, only to get up and repeat it the next day.

In December of 2017, one of the residents turns up missing. For reasons explained in the movie, he is presumed dead. There are 10 suspects. You get to meet all of them, in all their beer swilling glory.

The movie is about the effort taken to figure out what happened and who did it. And, it's also just a glimpse into another world.
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I don't have any of the streaming channels it's on so I'll just watch the trailer for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHlMBdF2Lcg
 
Last Train from Gun Hill (1959). Douglas, Quinn and Carolyn Jones who until I watched this would not have pulled out of a lineup that didn't include Halloween makeup.

Magnificent Seven, High Noon, LTfGH? In an era of cookie-cutter westerns this one is far, far from formulaic. Unforgiven with a purpose. Quinn and Douglas kill their performances. Highly recommend.
 
Slap Shot said:
Last Train from Gun Hill (1959). Douglas, Quinn and Carolyn Jones who until I watched this would not have pulled out of a lineup that didn't include Halloween makeup.

Magnificent Seven, High Noon, LTfGH? In an era of cookie-cutter westerns this one is far, far from formulaic. Unforgiven with a purpose. Quinn and Douglas kill their performances. Highly recommend.
Click to expand...

Thank you for this tip, I will try it!
 
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