Yay
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Yep...I think I hate Preston Sturgess comedies. I was more than underwhelmed by THE LADY EVE and now...THE PALM BEACH STORY is even more nonsensical and silly. Soooo...it seems a wife is mad that a husband can't pay the rent. So she "leaves" him so she can swindle money away from a rich man to pay for his architectural dreams. Too bad the husband thinks it is real...and winds up chasing his wife down, only to become twisted up in the ruse with the rich man's Princess sister. I guess this all could have been charming...but there is no realistic emotion or even proper comedy that shines through. That train sequence with the millionaire clubs? My god....TEDIOUS. Looks like 1940s comedies are quite lacking.
After seeing Terrence Malick's THE NEW WORLD in 2005, I understood why English settlers would contemplate their place in nature and the order of the universe...mostly because they were integrating themselves into the world where Native Americans seemed so knowledgable about such musings. The same can't be said about his THE THIN RED LINE. It is a compulsively watchable movie, especially since it is 3 hours long and has some very slow points...but to believe that soldiers were thinking about THEIR place in the natural order while participating in the Battle of Guadalcanal...stretches credulity. I was reading Roger Eberts account of the film and he was exactly right. The thoughts and philosophical rants about the universe in such a movie are shared by scholars and philosophers...not by the soldiers themselves....and thus the movie is incredibly uneven. That being said....it IS enjoyable to watch because Malick is a master photographer and the performances by the ensemble cast are superb.
This movie isn't nearly as funny as it thinks it is...or even what it is heralded as. I had a conversation with my fellow movie reviewer recently about these old movies and how sometimes...we just don't get the popularity. I think a great movie is timeless...and there is no such thing as good for its time. I can appreciate significance and historical relevance...but a bore is a bore is a bore. Countless articles about The Lady Eve talk about how it is one of the comedy greats, and Barbara Stanwyck's performace is one of the best all time. Nope. The whole movie is man falls in love with woman. Woman is a con artist. Man falls in love with the woman again later when she shows up in a new personna and man believes it CAN'T be the same woman, because they look EXACTLY alike. Meh. Some parts are silly fun and I DO like how Stanwyck and Henry Fonda play off eachother...but a classic? I don't buy it.
It is so refreshing to see a movie that is simple on paper, elevated to near perfection by its actors. Brando, Malden, Cobb, and Steiger are all so electric as they play out a story that is as simple as a man grappling with his own conscience over his involvement in violent union-involved murder. People say that Elia Kazan created this movie as a sort of contrition over his House Unamerican Act finger-pointing. I like to stay ignorant of the director's personal life. If I didn't....I wouldn't like Polanski or Allen movies either. Powerful Movie and worthy of its 8 oscars. The only reason it didn't win all 11 it was nominated for was because Malden, Cobb, and Steiger all split the Supporting Actor vote.
Another Hitchcock movie, another dud. Hitchcock is good at mounting suspense...and the scene where a gullible young man is carrying a time bomb is truly horrifying and tension filled (as well as the scene where Sylvia Sydney is deciding whether or not to kill her husband). But all of those scenes in between the suspense just drag, and drag, and drag. The film is also poorly titled. It should be called TERRORISM instead of SABOTAGE....but then again, Terrorism wasn't such a catchphrasey word back in 1936 as it is today. Short and simple to a fault...this is another dissapointment from the so-called Master of Suspense. If only that tension could have been maintained throughout...THEN we would have had something.
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford give riveting performances in this film...and the entire concept where a woman is keeping her parapeligic sister captive and under her control shows me that Rob Reiner's MISERY was not as original as I thought it was. The movie drags at times...but the tension is palpable and the legendary feud between the two actresses really elevates their hate-filled performances. The black and white photography is a nice touch because it adds to the drab helplessness that Blanche must have been feeling in her situation. Jane is the quintessential crazy shut in and Bette Davis created quite an iconic, archetypal character. I enjoyed it...but I was hoping for excitement ratcheted up to WHO'S AFRAID OF VIGINIA WOLFF levels.
Just like THE MALTESE FALCON, I love these film noir mysteries with Bogart. I have no idea what was actually going on in this film. It was something about a missing chauffer, blackmail, murders, gamblers, and something or other. Bogart is just an actor you can watch for hours and hours as he talks tough to the bad guys and suave to the women. He is quite a magnetic presence. I only give FALCON a better rating because that film had Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Otherwise...it is a fun Private Eye film.
Definitely one of those films that are famous for being notable in film history...not quite because it is particularly entertaining. It is a film made in Iran that won the Venice Film Festival, all under the Shah's rule...so it was a significant achievement for third-world cinema. The story is about a poof villager who is unhealthily obsessed with his cow. When it dies while he is away, the villagers band together to protect this man from the awful truth. When he does...he loses his mind and pretends that he, himself is the cow. It is an odd movie that echoes a bit of Fellini's black and white work....but significance surely outweighs its appeal.
In lesser hands, MY LEFT FOOT could have come across as a stunt lacking much emotion...but under the careful hands of Director Jim Sheridan and the great Daniel Day Lewis....this story of Christy Brown is touching, funny, beautiful, and perfectly frustrating. To see how Christy was trapped in his own Cerebral Palsy body is so heartbreaking and excruciating...yet the movie does not ask for sympathy or pity. The movie wonderfully portrays a story where the lead has a hardship but overcomes it. It is a classic idea...but seeing Daniel Day Lewis at his best makes the entire movie feel original.
Some people consider Spike Lee's films a bit militant and controversial. His brilliance behind DO THE RIGHT THING is that he invites the audience to become those with an internal controversy by never quite taking a side in the racial volatility throughout the film. The tension is palpable as we all live through a hot day in a Bed-Stuy neighborhood where Sal's Pizza is a central location. Many people seem to have their prejudices, but for the most part, it is live-and-let-live. But Spike Lee's invites us to realize, and bring our own prejudices to the table, that our society has nearly evolved to a point where conflict is necessary. Very well done. Spike Lee's own character of Mookie is a bit confused and his motivations are vague...but Danny Aiello is absolutely superb.
I just think I totally missed the point of Alfred Hitchcock's THE 39 STEPS. A man is framed of murder and then he goes bounding around trying to figure out what happened. Not scary. Not funny. Not even interesting at all. It has the ham-handed acting that most 1930s movies have...but with none of the charm. When Hitchcock has a PSYCHO under his belt...his failures like this movie are so obvious and disappointing. That scene where the characters are handcuffed and talking in bed? SO BORING!!! Kill me now!!!
I don't think I have ever before seen a more powerful, tear-inducing, poignant human drama than KRAMER VS. KRAMER. It is a simple story about a man whose wife walks out on him and his 6 year old son and shows up 18 months later seeking custody. In lesser hands, such a simple film would come across like a LAW & ORDER episode. As it is...it is worthy of virtually all of its Oscar wins (100% behind Picture, Actor, Supporting Actress, and Screenplay...but I could argue Director for Coppolla in APOCALYPSE NOW. Hoffman is terrific and scenes like the infamous Ice Cream scene and when his son recieves stitches made my heart ache at the seriousness and relatability of young Billy's parents' predicament.
Movies about the lack of knowledge and characters that to not understand their situation are few and far between....because it is hard to tell a story about people who "don't know what happened". Peter Weir's film is a solid example on how to make a movie like this. It follows a trip by a bunch of college girls, in 1900, when 4 of them disappeared without a trace during their picnic at the locally famous geological outcropping. No one knows what happened, no one understands why no one knows, and we never find out. It is an odd approach to the movie....but Weir's cinematography and especially the score, project a sense of mystery that can easily be explained like it was a Twilight Zone episode written by Jane Austen.
I was just having a conversation about how Stanley Kubrick has historically had the ability to hypnotize me. Think about it. 2001, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, EYES WIDE SHUT, FULL METAL JACKET, THE SHINING...thse are all movies that kind of space you out in a way to get its point across...and they all work beautifully. This film is no exception, even though most people forget about it as one of Kubrick's masterpieces. It has the scope and epicness of any movie ever made. Its cinematography is astounding, the costumes and makeup are flawless, and the art direction is top notch. Into this epically scoped film is as simple a story as one could imagine....and that is sort of the film's brilliance. Amidst the backdrop of some of cinema's all-time greatest beauty...we have a simple man who fell into success and fell out again...and did it without much fanfare. I didn't need any more proof that Kubrick was a master before starting this project...but first PATHS OF GLORY, and now BARRY LYNDON has further solidified that fact.
**
Well...I guess I just don't quite get Carl Theodor Dreyer's fame. I wasn't much impressed with his PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC and I wasn't too impressed with this spook story either. The man, for the time, had a good eye and projected eerie visuals onto his film...but VAMPYR just seems to meander along without direction or purpose, and the fact that this was his first non-silent film...is obvious. There is hardly any dialogue so the story is told through walking, seeing, and making faces...and it is simply odd.
I know it has been a long time since I got to one of these movies, and man oh man was I disappointed by the movie I chose to get me back into the swing of things. 1958's DRACULA was terrible. I actually liked Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, but the entire production felt like a choppy greatest hits montage. Here is this classic scene, here is this memorable encounter. We all know the Dracula story...but this version has absolutely no narrative pace and doesn't feel to even TELL a story...just exhibit one. The film seems to know that we are familliar with the subject matter, so it just jumps back and forth to the scenes we expect. The castle? Don't make me laugh. Leslie Nielsen's castle in DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT is far more convincing!!
***
It took me a bit after this film was over to really understand what it was about. I was confused because it seemed to be just a young girl, who saw the original Frankenstein movie, who has been told by her sister that the monster's spirit lives in a small farmhouse out in the wilderness. I watched the film as if that was all it was about, and I was a bit bored. It wasn't until post-film reflection that I realized it was kind of a PAN'S LABYRINTH film...only this little girl's horrors that she is trying to escape were not war. I realized this when I remembered how her father was filmed with ominous camera angles and she imagined her father as the monster himself. When it all came together in my brain...it was quite haunting.
Just as when I saw THE THING for the first time, I was horrified, grossed out, and totally enamored with David Cronenberg's THE FLY. I loved how the creation of the "Telepods" were taken for granted and that we realize that this genius scientist worked for years and years before we first meet him at the cocktail party in the beginning of the film. Jeff Goldblum's deterioration throughout this film is a marvel of makeup and atmosphere. The various levels of his decay are definitely the things nightmares are formed around. Not only that, but the themes that Cronenberg brings up in this film (jealousy, abortion, journalistic responsibility, empathy) are all poignant and not at all forced. Loved this film!!
This was my first foray into the Marx Brothers, and it took me almost 90% of this film to kind of appreciate what was being done. First of all...I never realized that Groucho's moustache was painted on. That made me laugh. However, this film was a nonsensical barrage of bad puns and double entendres. "We should have a standing army! Why? We will save on chairs" is probably the most clever pun in the film...so you can imagine how rapid fire, vaudvillian wordplay can get annoying. The famous "man in the mirror" bit is inspired, but I imagined it a bit more flawless. The final battle sequences are actually very funny...but when the film was over...I felt a bit underwhelmed. The Marx Brothers are comedic royalty in the history of cinema...but I much preferred the genius of Buster Keaton's THE GENERAL when I saw that a few weeks ago.
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