Gunga Din - George Stevens - 1939

★★★★-One of the movies I intended for my greatest years in film project. This from 1939. 

If you've seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, you'll recognize this movie as an obvious inspiration. Same regrettable racial undertones, scene on a bridge, the Thuggees worshiping Kali, so forth. A lot of scenes are straight up lifted from this flick. Not the easiest film to revisit in 2023, but it's a hell of an adventure flick. 

Gist is three British soldiers in India played by Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Victor McLaglen go on a a dangerous telegraph-repair mission. With their water carrier Gunga Din, played by white dude in body paint Sam Jaffe, they come across the mythic Thugge cult. At some point Gunga tells Cary Grant about a temple made of gold. While trying to claim it or whatever, Grant is captured, forcing the other soldiers to come rescue him. 

The performances are pretty great. This is the kind of Cary Grant character that I love. Studly with comedic elements. Not outright comedic. 

Solid action with huge set pieces and explosions. Throwing sticks of dynamite is not recommended but happens a lot in this movie. One Thuggee tries his luck but hilariously explodes. There is also a pit of the fakest snakes ever. You can see the strings wriggling them around. 

Overall, though it doesn't feel like a cohesive movie, it was great entertainment. Solid action sequences, outstanding performances, decent amount of humor: it's a highly enjoyable watch.

Bringing Up Baby - Howard Hawks - 1938

★★-Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant screwball romcom. It's where the term “screwball comedy” originated, actually. Oof. Has not aged well. 

Gist of it is a paleontologist (Grant) gets himself into predicaments involving a scatterbrained heiress (Hepburn) and a leopard named Baby. Shenanigans ensue. 

Personally, I can't really get over how that poor leopard probably had a pretty terrible life. Really ruins the comedy of it if you give a shit about animals. It's like that Eddie Murphy/Martin Lawrence movie Life. How can people possibly think a movie about two wrongly convicted men who spend their entire lives in prison could in any way be funny? Some things I just can't get past. 

Hepburn and Grant are both a couple of bitches in this flick. Hepburn is exactly like the unflattering Cate Blanchett portrayal in The Aviator. Her character is what film critic Nathan Rabin coined as the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” (MPDG) archetype in reference to Kirsten Dunst's character in Elizabethtown. Writing for the AV Club, he says the MPDG “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” 

The MPDG, along with other stock characters like the Magical Negro, pretty much has the sole function of offering mystical guidance to the protagonist (almost always a man). As in the case here, the MPDG lacks a distinctive inner life, as her primary role revolves around imparting crucial life lessons to the protagonist.

Grant, for his part, is the biggest weenie I've ever seen in my life. Grant based his performance on the forgotten Charlie Chaplin rival Harold Lloyd—a physical comedian of the silent era that was sadly ambitious and famous for his glasses. In turn, Grant's character here is what Christopher Reeve based his performance as Clark Kent in Superman on. So when Superman wanted to be a wimp, he acted like this idiot. 

I pretty much hated this movie. The speed and noise in this were terrible for two people with head trauma, so it was more or less unwatchable. The characters are horrible and remarkably unlikeable. Plus, the movie is not funny. Example. At one point Grant is wearing a woman's robe. A lady asks him why he is wearing that. He says, “I suddenly turned gay!” Hilarious!. I can't believe this is considered a classic. Fuck this movie. 

North by Northwest is the great movie of all time

North by Northwest. Fantastic. Depending on the day, fave Alfred Hitchcock movie. Watch it every year. Cary Grant in this movie is the fucking coolest. 99% Fresh on Rotten Tomato, some fucking dipshit didn't like this movie. Again, what more do you fucking expect. If you haven't seen this flick, it is fucking awesome. It is what would happen if some hilarious guy was mistaken for James Bond and keeps idioting his way out of almost getting killed.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Gripping, suspenseful, and visually iconic, this late-period Hitchcock classic laid the groundwork for countless action thrillers to follow.

Gist of this movie is that Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill is out to lunch at a fancy restaurant. A waiter goes around with a phone calling for George Kaplan. Thornhill calls the guy over to order or something. Some goons are the lookout for the guy who answers the calls for Kaplan. Seeing this exchange, they decide that fucking guy is Kaplan and make his life hell for the next two and a half hours of run time. Trying to kill him and what not by filling up with booze and putting him behind the wheel and trying to buzz him with an aeroplane. You know, normal stuff.

In addition to Grant, cast includes Martin Landau who actually won an Academy Award for Best Supporting for 1994's Ed Wood plays the right hand man to Phillip Vandamm whose the guy trying to have Kaplan killed (basically his henchman), James Mason who starred in all kinds of shit (A Star Is Born [the 1954 encarnation], 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Lolita, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, so forth) plays Phillip Vandamm, and Eva Marie Saint as love interest and bad ass spy Eve Kendall. Les Tremayne of Creature of Destruction which I did a video on couple of years ago makes an appearance as the auctioneer. Bernard Herrmann notably does the musical score. This one of his most recognizable.

If nothing else, it is definitely the funnest Hitchcock movie. First, Grant's character is hilarious, sort of a dumb guy but means well. He also has a habit of thanking people when they insult him. No universe where he doesn't win the movie. Love the scene where after he gets pegged as Kaplan and they take him to Mason's home and force all the booze down his throat and he wakes up whilst they are trying to drive him off a cliff. He manages to steady the car and then drive until finally getting pulled over for being all over the road. When he tells everyone what happened, everyone, including his mother, laughs at him hysterically. He is also asked how much he drank and responds with drunken hand gestures. You would think this would be a sobering experience for the guy but he drinks his fucking ass off for the entirety of the movie. At one point he orders a Gibson on a train. I was going to make one of these, read what it was (gin, dry vermouth, and a pickled onion), and started to dry heave. Then there is a the scene when the bad guys have him cornered in an auction house. To get out of the situation, he acts like an asshole. When the bidding for a painting is in the thousands, he starts putting in bids dollar and goes down when Les Tremayne rebukes him.  A woman then calls him a "genuine idiot." "Thank you," he says. Again, he is rebuked. Bidding is started at $800. "Eight," Thornhill says. He is thanked for getting into the spirit of things. "Eleven," he says later. "Thirteen," and when he is about to win, "thirteen dollars." Everyone laughs. He then says that is more than the painting is worth. Then he jumps up to $2000. "Excuse me?" "$2100... $2500." They ignore him and he keeps upping the bid. Finally they go to kick him out and the cops show up. At this point he punches a guy in the face. He is an all out wild man by this point. THe cops then let him go even though he is an international fugitive, long story. He finds out the chick he was into, Eva Marie Saint, whom I adore in pretty much everything, is the real Kaplan and her cover was blown, he takes off to go save her then we go have a brawl in a fictional Frank Lloyd Wright on top of Mount Rushmore. It is insane and fantastical and amazing. Best movie of all time, indeed.

Arsenic and Old Lace is the worst movie of all time

Arsenic and Old Lace. This movie is insane. As a buddy said of this movie, "Hollywood trying to mainstream wild ideas." Referring to all the forced euthanasia in the movie--i.e. straight up murder as these two old broads take old lonely dudes into their home, which is sort of a 1940s Airbnb situation. So these sociopaths, they are depicted as sweet but I fucking know, raised three brothers, their nephews I think. None of them are what you would call well adjusted.

First, there is Cary Grant. Protagonist. One of my favorites of all time. Several of my top 10 feature him as the leading man. He was an LSD enthusiast for Christ's sake. This movie, however, considered a classic, I fucking hated. Grant's performance is frantic and all over the place and Don Knott's esque. He is a bachelor who writes books for pathetic guys. Turns out he is newly married, as of that day (the whole movie takes place Halloween night though they get no trick or treaters) and wants to keep it secret. None of this really matters except that he should be boning this chick but instead is mostly seen frantically on the phone after discovering that his aunts are murdering people. He also breaks the fourth wall roughly five or six irritating times.

His brother that he is protecting, trying to get him into this sanitarium, Bellevue, maybe, as he legit thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt. He buries the bodies and what not. His other bro, meanwhile, is a complete psycho. He is a hit-man or something and shows up at the house after being away since childhood with Peter Lorre's creepy ass and his own murder victim.

This shit is cray and way too lighthearted about torture, murdering old people, and being a complete psycho. Filmed in 1941 during WWII, it was released in 1944, I guess this what you'd call escapist humor though I found that aspect of it to be more disturbing. Least favorite Frank Capra movie of those I've seen. Deleting off my Plex server as I'm never watching this shit again.