In December of 2020, when it became clear we were not going to be returning to normal life any time soon, we purchased a big honking 55-inch 4K TV and settled in for a year of watching movies at home. By Dec. 31, 2021, we had watched 236 movies either together or separately. This is one of series of blog posts about those films.
No fancy introduction this time. Just an assortment of four movies framed by a pair of prominent monster stories.
1976’s edition of King Kong, directed by John Guillermin, starring Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin and Jessica Lange. For whatever reason — nostalgia, watching it for the first time at age 16, some great actors (it was Jessica Lange’s starring debut!) — this is my favorite of the Big Monkey movies. It also has added poignancy from featuring a very early look at the recently completed World Trade Center’s twin towers. It carries an emotional wallop now that the film maker never could have anticipated. But I won’t call it a guilty pleasure movie given that even the ever-acerbic New Yorker movie critic Pauline Kael liked it. (Watched this with my dear Mum-in-Law, who liked monster movies, too.)
Witness to Murder, 1954, directed by Roy Rowland; starring Barbara Stanwyck, George Sanders and Gary Merrill. This is of the woman-sees-a-murder-and-no-one-believes-her genre, an is a fun film noir. It also includes the ever-popular “denazified Nazi” bad guy. Unfortunately for Stanwyck and the rest of the cast, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window came out at about the same time and likely took away audiences. Still, it’s a fun little period thriller.
That Hamilton Woman, 1941, directed by Alexander Korda; starring Viven Leigh and Laurence Olivier. Most Americans will have heard of Trafalgar Square and might know that it has something to do with the Napoleonic Wars era. A more engaged person will know that it’s a memorial to Admiral Horatio Nelson. But you might need to be a bit of Napoleonic-era nerd to know about Nelson’s scandalous affair with Lady Emma Hamilton. This film tells the story through flashbacks of the rise and catastrophic fall of Lady Hamilton. It also functioned as a World War II propaganda film to make people more sympathetic toward Britain. More than a bit soapy, but a lot of fun. (Again, one that was just for Mum-in-Law and me.)
Family Plot, 1976, directed by Alfred Hitchcock; staring Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, William Devane and Karen Black. A late-career black comedy from Hitchcock, it features a post-Jaws, pre-Star Wars score from John Williams – the only score he would do for Hitch. (I don’t have a count of how many Hitchcock films we saw in 2021, but his films would almost certainly be the most frequent director for us.) BTW, this has one of those fun Hitchcock-hosted trailers. You want to see this.
Sealed Cargo, 1951, directed by Alfred L. Werker; staring Dana Andrews, Claude Raines, and Carla Balenda. A fun World War II story of about an American fisherman (Andrews) going up against a German U-boat in a rather far-fetched story that also involves a square-rigged Danish ship. Along with seeing a lot of Hitchcock movies, we also saw a lot of fighting-the-Nazis movies as well.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters, 2019, directed by Michael Dougherty, staring Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins and Charles Dance. Part of the Titan series of monster films set in the common universe of the 2014 Godzilla reboot. There have been a number of films in this series, and we’ll be watching more of them before the year is out. I first saw King of the Monsters in the theater and wasn’t overly impressed. Then I listened to the audiobook of the novelization of the movie, and I started liking it a lot better. It has a fun cast with Vera Farmiga from Bates Motel, Millie Bobby Brown from Stranger Things, Bradley Whitford from Tick, Tick…BOOM!, and Charles Dance from Game of Thrones. Stupid fun, if you aren’t expecting too much from it. And with that, we are back to roughly where we started with 1976’s King Kong.
Coming up next: One of the most exciting noirs we saw in 2021