Have You Ever Seen

The French Foreign Legion called the 3 Geste boys and they trekked off to Africa to end up in William Wellman's tense adventure flick. It's an action-war film that ends with a long, but well-paced siege inside a fort. Gary Cooper is miscast as the title character (he's too old and too American), but he has pretty good chemistry with Ray Milland and Robert Preston, who play his brothers. Susan Hayward is briefly in this too, although Brian Donlevy steals the movie as a jerk sergeant...and got an Oscar nomination for it. There's also a movie-long mystery here after someone steals their benefactor's expensive sapphire. But who...and why?! So tune in for episode #750 as white bros go on assignment in Africa and play war with the locals in Beau Geste.
Subscribe to Have You Ever Seen in your app. Jot down a nice review and rate the show too. How do you get in touch? Well, I'm "@moviefiend51" on Twitter, "Ryan-Ellis" on Bluesky and "RyanHYES" on Letterboxd. Prefer email? Well, that's "haveyoueverseenpodcast@gmail.com."

Let's go back to December 2016 when John Lee Hancock's The Founder and Martin Scorsese's Silence were positioned as Oscar contenders. Neither won a gold trophy, but Hancock made the better movie. The Founder is a big-business biopic about Ray Kroc sharking Dick & Mac McDonald out of their own fast-food creation, then franchising McDonald's worldwide. The product isn't so good now, but the film about it is very entertaining, especially Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch's chemistry as the McDonald's brothers. Then I reviewed Silence, although that section is really an evaluation of the noted gangster maestro's religious passion projects...and how Marty is just not at his best when his movies are explicitly about faith. So get drive-though as you swallow this 749th episode where I preach about The Founder & Silence.
Subscribe to Have You Ever Seen in your podcast application. Rate the show and review it as well. Also, I like to be contacted. The email address is haveyoueverseenpodcast@gmail.com. Twitter is "@moviefiend51", Bluesky is "ryan-ellis" and Letterboxd is "RyanHYES".

June started on this podcast with a fast-cutting musical in Moulin Rouge. Now I end the month talking about an old-school Technicolor song-and-dancer...and it was an award-winning mega-smash. The King And I is Walter Lang's crowning achievement as a director and the King is the part Yul Brynner played thousands of times onstage. He won an Oscar for playing this hardheaded chauvinist on celluloid opposite Deborah Kerr's Anna, the headstrong English widow hired to teach his many kids. The culture clash leads to a curious "love" story where they barely touch each other until that...well, let's say head-scratching climax. Not a fan of that ending! The lavish production is entirely set-bound, but this is still quite an experience. So settle in for my 748th episode as I investigate the et ceteras in The King And I.
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The podcast rulebook says you have to cover a plane movie for episode #747, so I went with the daddy of the '70s disaster craze. The planes are 707s in Airport, but oh well. George Seaton writes & directs a cast of stars & Oscar-winners (including Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, George Kennedy and Jacqueline Bissett). He was rewarded with a blockbuster hit that snagged 10 Oscar nominations (Helen Hayes even won for her adequate supporting performance) and it started a run of Airport flicks. Those 3 sequels and the various disaster films this influenced followed the formula of intertwining stories, romance, some humour and a lot of peril (in this case, there's a Heflin bomb onboard). This is one of the better ones. It's entertaining and has a thrilling climax. So spend some time hearing about Airport.
Subscribe to my channel in your podcast app. Rate my show and review it too. Follow me on Twitter, Bluesky and Letterboxd (@moviefiend51, ryan-ellis and RyanHYES, respectively). As for email, that's "haveyoueverseenpodcast@gmail.com."

F.W. Murnau didn't live long enough to direct a huge slate of films, but the man bullhorning The Last Laugh also has Nosferatu, Faust and Sunrise on his resume. Like those, The Last Laugh is a silent picture And THIS one infamously uses very few intertitles to explain dialogue or motivations. So Emil Jannings went very big! The story is that he loses his job as the doorman of a swanky hotel, leading to depression and shame. The artistry by Murnau and his team are terrific. Their movie is slow-paced and extremely melodramatic, but there's poetry...until an irrational deus ex machina in the last 15 minutes. The story in episode #746 ends up leaving much to be desired. So enjoy the rare Friday show the next few months as I hand out towels and talk about The Last Laugh.
Rate and review this podcast in your application, but also become a subscriber. Seek me out on Letterboxd too (RyanHYES) and also Twitter (@moviefiend51) and Bluesky (ryan-ellis). The email address is "haveyoueverseenpodcast@gmail.com".