The Lady Eve is the worst movie of all time

The Lady Eve. "There's just one thing. I feel it's only fair to tell you. It would never have happened except she looked so exactly like you." ... "They look too much alike to be the same." ... "Positively the same dame!" Fucking idiot. A woman grifts a guy multiple times, and he just thinks she's a look-alike. Insanity. 

Been on a Preston Sturges kick. Added a bunch of flicks on the Criterion Channel recently. I'm not sure if I think he is terrible or not. This movie, though. The fucking audacity of this movie. Considered a classic, both my female companion and I thought otherwise. 

Gist of the flick is that a trio of grifters go to cheat Henry Fonda's character, an adventurous heir to a brewery fortune, but the dame falls in love. So after they take him for some of his money, she decides to do it again, and this fucking dipshit falls for it because he is too dumb to live. 

Movie stars Barbara Stanwyck from the fantastic Billy Wilder flick Double Indemnity as the lady grifter, the "legendary" Fonda, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, and William Demarest who is an old guy you might recognize from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Demarest or Stanwyck win the movie. Demarest is a great hard-ass straight man, while Stanwyck more or less carries the movie. 

Not exactly the wokest movie I've ever seen. A lot of stupid women talk. Example: "A girl of sixteen's practically an idiot anyway, so I can't very well blame you for something that was practically done by somebody else." Thank you, oh wise one who can't even recognize the same woman. Of course, Fonda says this to Stanwyck's character, who is grifting the shit out of him. It is insane, really. 

While Fonda does a great Lincoln or Tom Joad or whatever, he is not good at comedy. Dude is stiff as fuck. There were times when I questioned whether his character had a traumatic brain injury or something. Again--sort of hammering this home--Stanwyck comes back into his life as another person... which he believes because he thinks if it was the same woman, she would’ve disguised herself... Are you fucking kidding me, bra? I thought he couldn't fucking believe this because it was so audacious. He had to fucking know, right? But apparently not. He's just insanely dumb. He deserves to be grifted. 

Nor did I find the movie all that funny. A lot of the humor revolves around Fonda having to change his dinner jackets like five or six times. Maybe it is a metaphor or something. Plus, I think, a lot of the humor is based on close talking and the idea that Fonda has an unseen erection (see above photo)--which might actually be kind of funny in retrospect. 

Maybe you should watch this flick just to see this for the sheer bizarreness. I mean, holy shit. I'm sort of still in disbelief. Fonda is such an amazing tool that I may never get over it. 

The Apartment - Billy Wilder - 1960

★★★★★-The Apartment. When you're in love with a married man, you shouldn't wear mascara... That's how it crumbles... you know, cookie-wise. Jesus. I adored this movie. Jack Lemmon is seriously phenomenal in everything I've ever seen him in. Also, Billy Wilder is three-for-three in the movies I've blogged about, also loved Some Like It Hot and Sunset Boulevard, and half a dozen others I've seen at some point in life are also dope. Don't see this ever listed among the greatest movies of all time but it should be. Hands down the best and most rewatchable romantic comedy, IMO.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Director Billy Wilder's customary cynicism is leavened here by tender humor, romance, and genuine pathos.

Directed by Wilder, he and one I. A. L. Diamond co-wrote the screenplay. Nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning five including Best Picture, Best Director, and Beast Screenplay. Gist of the movie is that insurance agent Bud Baxter (Lemmon) allows his higher ups to use his Upper West Side apartment to take their mistresses for affairs with the promise of moving up the corporate ladder. When Bud's prick of a boss, Sheldrake played by Fred MacMurray (whom I recognize from Double Indemnity and as the dad in My Three Sons) brings elevator operator Fran Kubelik, played by the lovely Shirley MacLaine, a woman that Bud is secretly in love with, shit gets real.

This movie is way darker of a romantic comedy than we are used to today featuring attempted suicide and married men promising to leave their wives, we know how that is, right ladies? Behind the concept was even darker shit as Diamond incorporated a life experience of one of his friends who came home after breaking up with his girlfriend and finding her dead, having committed suicide in his bed into Wilder's original comedy about adultery. Yeesh. Also included elements of another true story where Hollywood agent Jennings Lang was shot by producer Walter Wanger for having an affair with his wife, actress Joan Bennett, having used the apartment of one his low-level employees to conduct the affair.

A few bullet points... Shirley MacLaine is adorably cute. Pixie hair, quick wit, cosmopolitan. She is a cool chick. Easy to see how Bud genuinely falls for her. You feel protective of her as Sheldrake does what he does to her. It's really heartbreaking when she almost kills herself which everyone assumes was Bud's fault as his neighbors think he is just constantly bringing chicks home. The physician down the hall, one Dr. Dreyfuss played wonderfully by Jack Kruschen who was nominated for Best Supporting, who saves Fran's life, along with the landlady, give Bud hell for breaking the girl's heart when in reality it was Sheldrake (though it did look bad for him since he was drunk and brought back this other woman). Then, after she spends a couple of days at his apartment, her brother in-law, she is living with him and her sister, shows up and kicks his ass. Good stuff. Also, Lemmon easily wins the movie. Dude is funny and genuinely good. Kevin Spacey dedicated his Best Actor Oscar for American Beauty (maybe the movie from the last 20 years to age the worst that was once considered good) to Lemmon.

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.

Baghead is the worst movie of all time

Baghead. Yeesh. Low budget AF. The description made it out to be a horror comedy. What it really is is a love triangle amongst struggling actors trying to write their own movie with some bullshit sandwiched in. Did not fucking like. Deleted off my Plex server. Into the ether you go.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Pitting actors against murderers in a self-aware struggle for stardom, Baghead successfully skates the borders of horror and comedy.

Was liked by critics apparently. Fucking 79% on RT, my ass... Though most of the acting pretty alright. A young Greta Gerwig is in it. She's the independent darling now making her case for stardom. Was in Lady Bird which I still need to see. I think of her as the friend in that Ti West movie House of the Devil, a great flick. She is super 80s and cute in it and how she got on my radar. Also check her in the Woody Allen movie To Rome with Love. Probably her biggish break.
She is really good. She also gets topless. Meow. Only reason to see this I guess would be if you are some kind of Gerwig completist or pervert or something. She 100% wins the movie. She is like noticeable a notch above everyone else in the movie, who are all serviceable enough.

Some people can only consider a movie horror if someone dies. This just came up on one of my favorite podcasts, Unspooled, dealing with the AFI Top 100 list. It's tits. Anyway. With like one exception I can think of, April Fool's Day, I agree that horror has to have murder. This ain't got shit. This movie is a pump fake which I will not forgive.

Also, something else I can't deal with is a huge pussy. This chunky guy that wants to get with Gerwig's character is fucking awful. Such a wishy-washy bitch. Almost the same as the fat fuck in Friday the 13th Part 3. The type of guy that is like, "sorry I'm such a fucking loser" when he gets turned down. When he tries to make a move, my vagina shrivels up and dies. She, drunk AF, says he is like her brother, he goes in for a kiss whilst her head is down, he sort of headbutts her, she is like, "ouch, you headbutted me" and headbutts him back. He tries to tell her how he feels but in a totally awful way and she puts little hair clips on him saying he "looks like a toddler." At this point he is like I'm gonna go. The next day he goes to his cool friend guy who wants to make this movie, this guy is there with his on-again-off-again, and asks him to write his character as boyfriend and girlfriend with Gerwig's character. He then says shit like, "hey movie girlfriend," meanwhile, she is writing notes to the cool writer guy saying shit like "seriously, I want to fuck." Ugh. Fucking embarrassment. Don't be this guy, for fuck's sake, be a fucking man.

But hey. I respect that the filmmakers went out and made this shit. No money, no effects, I didn't like it, but fuck it, they made this, likely identifying with the characters who couldn't get a break and shit, and here it is. Out there. An independent success. Props on that.