A year of movies 

Last year, I watched 186 movies, mostly recorded off TCM, a few off lesser cable movie channels and one in an actual movie theatre. Here’s a couple of random thoughts. 

The Bowery Boys made 48 movies and I watched 21 of them last year, much more than any human should endure. If you’re looking for continuity within the Bowery Boys Cinematic Universe, forget it. What drove me crazy was the character of Gabe (Gabe Dell), whose personality and occupation changed from one movie to the next, anything to move the story along. He’s a private detective, or a washing machine salesman, a naval officer (with a French wife), muck-racking radio commentator, then he crosses over the tracks to play a hoodlum. And that’s just what comes to mind immediately. 

Bewildered

It also dawned on me that Huntz Hall plays his character Sach like the hophead Hall was in real life (he was arrested in 1948 for marijuana possession): the always-bewildered look, the stream of non-sequiturs and a fascination with the mundane. He was scoring more than just banana splits at Louie’s Sweet Shop. 

Here are the five unexpectedly best movies I saw last year: 

Stray Dog (1949) was directed by Akira Kurosawa and stars Toshiro Mifune as a detective whose service revolver is stolen and used to kill someone in a robbery. He and his partner track the killer in post-war Japan (which looks a mess, all rutted roads and shacks, people crippled with disillusionment), conducted during an oppressive heat wave that almost becomes another character. On a night when thunderstorms threaten, you know that the heat wave, and the case, are about to be cracked. 

Saw Godzilla (2023) in the theatre. You’d expect a sci-fi movie made in 2023 to have great special effects and this one doesn’t disappoint. What you wouldn’t expect is a compelling subplot about the redemption of a failed war hero, a kamikaze pilot who had second thoughts. 

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) is a heist film nor full of betrayals and bad blood, with a all-star cast of character actors -- Sterling Hayden, Sam Jaffe, Marc Lawrence, John McIntyre, James Whitmore, Louis Calhern and Jean Hagen, not to mention Marilyn Monroe in an uncredited role as lawyer Calhern's kept woman. With a perfect dream-like ending that takes place hundreds of miles from any asphalt jungle. 

On the surface, the premise of Metropolitan (1990) doesn't sound all that promising: A group of privileged white kids participate in the gala debutante season. As unsympathetic and pretentious as they sometimes seem, between earnest discussions about Jane Austen and dancing in conga lines, several of them, played by amateur actors, do a lot of growing up in the movie as the film takes several poignant turns. 

A hitman is assigned to knock off an overly ambitious crime lord during the Christmas holidays. That's the plot of Blast of Silence (1961), filmed guerilla style without permits on the Staten Island Ferry, Queens, the Village, Harlem and Rockefeller Center. It offers glimpses of a long-gone New York City: a hotel with a sign welcoming “transients” and street views of bookstores, record stores and what used to be called stationery stores that sold newspapers, magazines, cigars and candy. A good punchy story too.