It’s Captain Picard!

See!?

That’s… that’s… he looks very familiar.

So this is about a young naive prisoner (who’s also somehow the prison sub-administrator?) and everybody’s telling him to be more corrupt, but he refuses.

I’m guessing he’s gonna have a bad time.

FAT CAT SPOTTED

My problem with this movie is that there’s really no tension — we know that these fat cats are horrible, horrible people, so things are going to be horrible and depressing for 127 minutes, and then this is going to be over. I mean, even in 1973, in the UK, that couldn’t have been a surprise?

I mean, it’s not Ibsen, ey?

This is quite well made. I like it on a scene by scene basis, really, it’s just hard to stay interested…

So judgemental!

The Love-Girl and the Innocent (Russian: Олень и шалашовка; also translated The Tenderfoot and the Tart, and The Greenhorn and the Tramp)

I think “The Nerd and The Woman” would be a better title, really. The Nerd character seems like a Mary Sue?

Well, I can tell from this movie that British people were pretty depressed for 127 minutes on Sunday, September 16, 1973. But in a kinda puzzled way: “So, er, this play was about how Stalin’s prison camps in 1945 were kinda naff? I mean, we didn’t really wonder about that; we already assumed they were, so I’m not sure we needed these 127 minutes to tell us that, but you do you, BBC! What’s for tea?”

I feel like I’m obviously a better writer than Solzhenitsyn, really.

The Love-Girl and the Innocent. Alan Clarke. 1973. ⚁

I’m not sure why I bought this, really:

Because that doesn’t sound very positive!

And I didn’t know there was a city in the US called that, too. Very edumacational I’m sure.

This is kinda high concept: A judge married five couples before the date he was authorised, so they were never actually legally married. The attorney discovers this two years later and send them all a letter informing them. How will each couple react!

So this is kind of an anthology movie? With five shorter stories around the same set-up? I think that sounds like it could be fun. It’s a short movie, though — 82 minutes — and they’ve spent 13 minutes getting things set up. So that’s 14 minutes per couple.

That’s kinda like a solid joke.

I like these two. (That’s the judge and his wife.)

Hey! The Monroe/Wayne bit was fun. It had a kind of O. Henry ending, but happy.

Yeah, Hazel Flagg was correct, of course. This is not a good movie. But I almost want to give it a ⚂ just because it has a lot of actors I like, but no. While there’s some entertaining scenes, it’s a quite boring movie, and not really worth watching.

We’re Not Married. Edmund Goulding. 1952. ⚁

Well, this starts off in a quite original fashion — Katharine Hepburn is affianced to this insufferable dork. Presumably Spencer Tracy is going to arrive to make her dump him?

There he is.

Heh heh.

OK, this is a golfing movie? There’s been a lot of golfing on the screen. It’s kinda contemplative, I guess…

If this movie was being filmed today, they’d have approx. seven extras. Instead of approx. seven hundred.

This is moving very, very slowly. I really enjoy Hepburn’s performance, but I’m also kinda itching for the movie to actually start, and we’re now 30 minutes in.

She does her own stunts!

I can’t tell whether this is science fiction or not. Was “pro tennis” a thing? Is it a thing? Did people really go to a lil stadium to watch some random people play tennis? I mean, in 1952, people had TVs, right, so they could watch Lucille Ball instead?

Hm… perhaps TVs were still expensive?

Making the most out of it.

We had half an hour of Hepburn playing golf, and are we now getting half an hour of her playing tennis? It seems that way…

Aldo Ray is great fun as the dim boxer.

OK, I don’t get this movie. There’s people saying that it’s their favourite, and etc etc. And:

Gordon and Kanin were nominated for the 1952 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for their work on Pat and Mike.

Nominated for the screenplay!? This movie had a screenplay!?

After the other two very good Hepburn/Tracy movies, this is a letdown. It’s not that it’s annoying or anything, but it’s just not very entertaining — the endless shots of Hepburn sportsing just aren’t fascinating. There’s some scenes of repartee, but it’s just a lazy movie in that regard — Aldo Ray has the funniest lines, and he floats by on his character’s dim charm.

So I don’t get it.

Pat and Mike. George Cukor. 1952. ⚂