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SMB Film Thread 2026


A few oldies:

Remember the Night [1940] 7/10
Barbara Stanwyck/Fred MacMurray pre-Double Indemnity romance. Charming.
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Phantom Lady [1944] 7/10
An innocent man framed for murder, the woman who loves him sets about proving his innocence. Robert Siodmak's film ticks most of the noir boxes.
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The Dark Corner [1946] 7/10
A P.I. gets dragged into a murder plot by a jealous husband. Lucille Ball is his Nancy Drew secretary.
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Collected my final two from Sidney Lumet:

Death Trap [1982] 7/10
Convoluted cat and mouse thriller. A twist too many.
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Running on Empty [1988] 8/10
Family on the run from the FBI filmed as a melodrama rather than a thriller. Good acting all round especially from River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton as lovestruck teenagers.
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The Meg 2 - utter utter shite. The first 30 seconds was better than anything in Jurassic World rebirth and there was one funny moment midway through but apart from that, jeez. What a waste of time. 2/10
 
Fletch73 said:
A few oldies:

Remember the Night [1940] 7/10
Barbara Stanwyck/Fred MacMurray pre-Double Indemnity romance. Charming.
You must be logged on to see media items

Phantom Lady [1944] 7/10
An innocent man framed for murder, the woman who loves him sets about proving his innocence. Robert Siodmak's film ticks most of the noir boxes.
You must be logged on to see media items

The Dark Corner [1946] 7/10
A P.I. gets dragged into a murder plot by a jealous husband. Lucille Ball is his Nancy Drew secretary.
You must be logged on to see media items
Click to expand...
Tremendous.
 
The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Orson’s accent is bloody awful. I’ll get that out the way straight away.

The rest is a fascinatingly chaotic weird noir, which has had me thinking about it since I watched it. The story and characterisation seems a bit messy in places, but the sense of strangeness seems very deliberate. Hayworth is good.

Loved the lighting and the camerawork, and the hall of mirrors bit is brilliant.

8/10
 
Doogie Hauser said:
The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Orson’s accent is bloody awful. I’ll get that out the way straight away.

The rest is a fascinatingly chaotic weird noir, which has had me thinking about it since I watched it. The story and characterisation seems a bit messy in places, but the sense of strangeness seems very deliberate. Hayworth is good.

Loved the lighting and the camerawork, and the hall of mirrors bit is brilliant.

8/10
Click to expand...

Memorably revisited at the end of Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery.

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Monty Pigeon said:
Memorably revisited at the end of Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery.

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Reading about Lady in Shanghai, it’s frustrating that the studio interfered with his work again, and his footage is lost.

The Wind of Change (1961) - YouTube

Directed by Vernon Sewell, who helmed Strongroom, this is an economical B film about race tensions. Johnny Briggs is openly racist and part of a gang who are unemployed and treat everyone in their sphere with contempt.

They beat the shit out of an immigrant, but Briggs doesn’t know that his own sister had grown close to the man they assaulted, and she gets hurt too. Donald Pleasence is his dad, who seems thoroughly ashamed of his son.

It’s an interesting look at attitudes of the day, and some of the themes described still feel relevant today. The language used is choice, and Briggs is framed as a thoroughly dislikeable person, blaming his own hatred and laziness on everyone but himself. He has zero redeeming features.

7/10
 
A pair from Douglas Sirk:

Written on the Wind [1956] 7.5/10
Lauren Bacall falls for an oil-rich, alcoholic, playboy. His sister is the town tramp obsessively in love with Rock Hudson. Rock is in love with Lauren Bacall.
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Magnificent Obsession [1954] 5/10
The plot of this film is too batsh*t for a Mexican soap opera.
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Fighting Mad (1957)

A boxer, who has accidentally killed people in the ring, ups sticks with his missus and travels to Canada to live with his uncle. His uncle had recently struck oil, but ne’er do well loggers nearby want a piece of the action.

The scenery - all filmed in Scotland - is lovely. The fisticuffs aren’t too bad. The acting is utterly awful, and the whole thing reeks of ineptitude.

3/10
 
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