MAESTRO
Or How to Conduct a One Note Movie
by armen pandola
Leonard Bernstein was one of the great musical talents of the 20th century. Like many people of a certain age, I first learned his name and heard his music when I saw the film, "West Side Story." Then, I began watching the 'Young People Concerts' and discovered classical music. Bernstein never talked down to us, his audience. He made classical music approachable and, most importantly, exciting. Whenever I could, I listened to or watched his concerts and bought his records.
So, I looked forward to a film biography of him. How did this son of a toupee maker become one of the most admired conductors, composers, teachers and performers of our time? What qualities did he have that made his music so exciting, so life-enhancing. He seemed to conquer every medium he touched. The amazing film score for "On the Waterfront", the hit musical theater shows, TV shows, albums, classical compositions - it was all too much for one person.
Bradley Cooper's "Maestro" is not interested in any of these questions. Instead, it is devoted, entirely, to his personal life with a few mentions of his professional successes and one gaudy, Oscar-hopeful scene when Lenny (the movie character) conducts Mahler.
If a person knew nothing of Bernstein's life and saw this movie, he would wonder what all the hoopla is about.
The movie has no context - none. It begins with an aged Bernstein playing the piano before a film crew and then suddenly jumps back in time (and into black and white - a real cliché). The b/w is supposed to tell you the time period - long ago. Lenny gets a phone call and goes berserk with joy while his male bed companion goes on sleeping. Soon, we are sleeping too.
I knew that Bernstein was married and that he was bi-sexual, but I never read gossip and so had no idea and no interest in his private life. "Maestro" is about that private life and his relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegro (Carry Mulligan). While a couple of other characters have a few moments of screen time, none are 'characters,' but merely background. "Maestro" is a pas de deux.
The movie jumps around without any identifiable purpose. Nothing about his music is explored or his beliefs. His early commitment to the state of Israel, his controversial political beliefs, his legacy of creating institutions for musical study - not even his incredible concert at the site of the then- recently fallen Berlin Wall - nothing is explored in this movie but Lenny and his penchant for young men and the effect that has on his marriage.
For the first half of the movie, there is no drama, no comedy - nothing. It's as if Andy Wharhol filmed his life in jump cuts. Then the first conflict in the movie is his wife telling Lenny that he is becoming careless and his bi-sexuality is becoming too public. This is strange since early on, presumably in the late 1940s, we see Lenny on a busy New York street embracing and kissing on the lips a male lover. Lenny is never inhibited about his desires. So why the sudden concern?
Again, no context. Bernstein avoided all the terrible prejudices against homosexuals during his time by marrying and having children. Yes, he loved Felicia and his children, but it was convenient that he did marry since he probably would never have headed a major orchestra if he had not. No mention of any of this.
So the movie jumps along. It ends with his marriage falling apart because of his lack of discretion (but he never had discretion so why it suddenly matters is unexplored), then coming back together when Felicia is diagnosed with breast cancer that has spread to her lungs. Lenny returns to be with her during her final months. After her death, he announces that he must have total freedom if he is to fulfill his artistic goals and the next scenes show his attachment to a young male student, snorting cocaine and dancing wildly in a disco - as if that is what freedom is.
I am sorry for Bernstein's legacy. We are the stories we tell about ourselves. Future generations will watch this movie and may think that this was his life. But what we do in bed does not define us. Not even our marriages define us. We define ourselves by all that we do and Leonard Bernstein did more for music in the 20th century than any other American - and telling that story would have been a great movie.
OPPENHEIMER
Or How to Make an Atomic Movie Bomb
by armen pandola
Movies about famous scientists are difficult.
The most obvious problem is that most people don’t understand science and many are actively hostile, remembering those numbing lectures in school and being forced to memorize things like the Periodic Table.
That’s why Hollywood mostly avoided movies about science and gave people something easier - science fiction. In SciFi, you don’t have to understand anything, you just have to see it. The explanation of ‘warp speed’ is the visual of the Enterprise zooming away into the distance.
When Hollywood has tackled bios about scientists, it has concentrated on the personal story a la The Imitation Game. The formula for this kind of movie dates back to The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936). The scientist struggles to get people to understand how amazing his discovery is and spends most of the movie in Sisyphus-mode, struggling to push that boulder (his discovery) up the hill and into the light.
Chris Nolan’s Oppenheimer takes a different path. Fractured and polychromatic, he tries to immerse the viewer in the inner world of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the ‘Father of the Atomic Bomb.” While three hours long, the movie provides information on its subject in small packets:
Oppenheimer, the student at Cambridge, clumsily failing to perform an experiment in a lab, is punished by his teacher and, in revenge, he prepares a poison apple for his teacher.
Oppenheimer meeting a young woman at a party, taking her to bed and reading Sanskrit poetry to her as they have sex.
Oppenheimer riding a horse in the wild countryside of New Mexico.
Oppenheimer giving a physics lecture in German after learning the language in only six weeks.
After the first hour of this fractured story, the movie settles down to tell two interwoven main stories - the making of the first atomic bomb and the government hearing to strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance nine years later.
The centerpiece of the first story is Trinity, the name Oppenheimer gave to the test of the first atomic bomb exploded on earth. Nolan attempts to make the audience ‘experience’ the event by showing us the bomb explode in silence, as its first viewers did, since light travels faster than sound. Then, the sound thunders through the theater and finally, we see the blast knock down people two miles from the explosion. It’s the best sequence in the movie.
Most of the characters in the movie are mere names - Einstein, Bohr, Lawrence, Truman. That is because Nolan doesn’t care about characters - just as in his previous movie, Dunkirk, Nolan has little interest in the humans in this story (see my review of Dunkirk, here). Cillian Murphy plays the title character with the same wide-eyed, semi-surprised look throughout the movie. While it was universally agreed that Oppenheimer was one of the most charming of men and had affairs with many women, you would never know it by this performance. Yes, Nolan has someone say that he was a ‘womanizer’ but why people, both men and women, adored him is never shown. Nolan makes the audience ‘experience’ the first atomic bomb, but nothing of the personality of his title character.
The other main character is Lewis Strauss (pronounced ‘straws’) played by Robert Downey, Jr. Strauss was a very complicated man - financial wizard, adviser to four presidents, philanthropist, original member of the Atomic Energy Commission and a man who was one of the few in government trying to allow more Jews into the US during the Nazi reign. Yet, in Oppenheimer, Nolan portrays him as a simple villain, a foil to the title character’s good-hearted innocence. The source of Strauss’ hatred of Oppenheimer, according to Nolan, is a foolish misunderstanding. Really? While this may even be true, it is a slim thread to hold up a three hour movie about America’s most controversial scientist and the beginning of the atomic age. You don’t end Hamlet with the revelation that he was wrong all along and Claudius didn’t kill his father. Mere misunderstandings do not make for great drama.
The other characters are more like line drawings, some with great make-up. Emily Blunt is the drunken, bitter wife of Oppenheimer. Florence Pugh is his unbalanced, sexy mistress, Matt Damon is the tough, no nonsense General in charge of the project. Lots of others are there for a scene or two, mere dots on a ten foot pointillist painting of dread and despair.
Stories like this one - about huge, important figures and events are better served by the new medium of limited series television. Told over several one or two hour episodes, characters and events can be given the time and depth needed to tell such monumental stories. In fact, TV has already done that with Oppenheimer. A 1980 BBC Masterpiece Theatre seven part series with Sam Waterson as Oppenheimer did a much better job in telling the story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_(TV_series), with none of the pyrotechnics of modern movies.
If Oppenheimer turns out to be a box office success, it will have more to do with the lack of current movies appealing to adult sensibilities than its own merits. Hollywood is desperate for great movies that are also big hits. I wish I could like this movie - I, too, would like to see a great movie that’s a great hit, too.
ADDENDUM
Since I have reviewed Oppenheimer, many of you have written or spoken to me in disagreement. You like the movie. I thought I should clarify the reasons for my disappointment in this movie.
J. Robert Oppenheimer was dismissed from his position as an advisor to the US government not because of some stupid argument with Lewis Strauss, head of the Atomic Energy Commission. Yes, they did have disagreements and yes, Oppenheimer could be ruthless with people who disagreed with him. And yes, Strauss used all of his powers to cast Oppenheimer as a traitor or, at least, a security risk. But the real reason he was dismissed was because of his beliefs.
Oppenheimer was a strong advocate for openness - for telling people the truth. Just as science could never progress without open discussion so too, he believed that democracy could never survive in the dark. The secrets that the US government wanted to keep were not secret to the Russians. They knew all about atomic bombs. No, the secrecy was to keep the American people in the dark. The effects of radiation, the impossibility of defending a nation against nuclear weapons, the fact that these weapons were weapons of terror, meant to destroy people and societies and not just win a battle - all of these secrets and many more were kept from the American people.
Most importantly, Oppenheimer was against the Cold War and the Nuclear Arms Race. He saw, as President Eisenhower did and spoke against in his Farewell Speech in 1960, the powerful ‘military-industrial complex’ that has kept the US military in clover and consuming over half of the discretionary federal budget for the past 75 years.
And when Oppenheimer was denied his security clearance, the message to all the other nuclear scientists in America was clear - if we can destroy Oppenheimer’s career, we can destroy anybody’s.
Now, that is a story worth telling. Also, it happens to be the truth.
So a movie about Oppenheimer that does not tell the truth is just too ironic - and sad.
SEE HOW THEY RUN
Or how to have fun catching a killer
By armen pandola
Do you miss the ‘good movie?’ Not the ‘great movie’ or the ‘blockbuster movie’ or the ‘top-10-best-movie-ever movie,’ but just a ‘good movie.’ The kind you can sit down to watch and smile or even laugh out loud once in a while and just let it pour over you like hot fudge on a cold, cold dish of Breyers vanilla ice cream. Not some fancy dessert, but just a good ole delicious dessert?
Well, that’s See How They Run, a spoof of who-done-it plays and movies of the kind that Agatha Christie became rich and famous for - you know, Murder on the Orient Express kind of thing. This one is set in London, 1953, during the early run of Christie’s most famous play, The Mousetrap which is still running in London.
The plot is simple and is explained early-on by an obnoxious American movie director played with his usual aplomb by Adrian Brody - a bunch of people are stuck somewhere, say on a train or a remote country house when one of them, the most obnoxious, is murdered. Then a detective or inspector appears to solve the murder, but everyone seems to have a very good motive for killing the SOB.
In this case, the inspector is played by Sam Rockwell. Ok, it’s not just his accent that gives away his Americanness, it’s everything about him - Rockwell is the least likely actor to play a British Scotland Yard Inspector, yet, he pulls it off. Look, he’s Sam Rockwell, he can act. Luckily, he has a partner, a young policewoman assigned to him to learn the ropes, played to perfection by Saoirse Ronan and they make a fun couple to spend an evening with.
The rest of the cast dutifully play their varied parts - philandering producer, conceited actor, uncompromising, pretentious writer, bumbling Chief Inspector who gets a knighthood for just being, well, a bumbling CI - all are thrown into the pot and thoroughly mixed into a silly, but not all-together ridiculous plot.
Along the way to the inevitable finale which is foretold near the beginning of the movie by its first victim, there are puns and more puns - the more you know about who-done-it stories, the better you will like this movie - chases and wrong-turns and lots of fun - fun being the operative requirement for most of the dialogue and plot twists.
Give your local cinema a break and go see this one. Sadly, there were only about a dozen other people at the Saturday night show I went to see. And the whole movie theater had less patrons than a Friday night soccer match in Abilene, TX.
Director: Tom George
Writer: Mark Chappell
Stars: Sam Rockwell, Saorise Ronan, Kieran Hodgson, Pearl Chanda, Gregory Cox, Harris Dickinson, Maggie McCarthy
Rating:PG-13
Running Time: 1h 38m
Genres: Comedy, Mystery
WEST SIDE STORY 2021
By armen pandola
On September 26, 1957, West Side Story (WSS) opened on Broadway to rave reviews. It has not been out of production since then. The story of star-crossed lovers from rival families or clans or gangs is an old one. Shakespeare penned the most famous version and called it Romeo and Juliet. Three Hundred and Fifty years later, Jerome Robbins, an American choreographer and director, had the idea of updating the story and putting it to music. Leonard Bernstein, boy wonder conductor and composer, was enlisted to write the music and an even younger prodigy, Stephan Sondheim, was commissioned to write the lyrics. Veteran playwright, Arthur Laurents, wrote the book. Together, they created one of the great works of the 20th Century - and they never all worked together again.
In 1961, a movie was made based on the show and was greeted with even greater acclaim, winning 10 Oscars. One of the multitude of trivia questions about this movie is - what director won Best Director for his first and only movie? Jerome Robbins co-directed with Robert Wise and not only never made another movie but was fired from the job less than half-way through production. It didn’t matter - he had already left his imprint.
The new WSS movie, directed by Steven Spielberg and with a script by Tony Kushner, has kept all the elements and characters that are important to the story including its original late 1950s time - rival gangs, the Jets (white) and the Sharks (Puerto Rican), fight for turf on the West Side of NYC when a former Jet (Tony) and a Puerto Rican (Maria) fall in love. Riff, leader of the Jets, is best friends with Tony while Bernardo, leader of the Sharks, is Maria’s brother and lover of Maria’s best friend, Anita. The main characters are rounded out by two police officers and the owner of a neighborhood store, Doc in the original show and movie and his widow, Valentina, a Puerto Rican woman, in Kushner’s script. Kushner also adds another level of conflict by setting the action in the ‘slum’ that is being cleared (destroyed) so that Lincoln Center can be built.
The changes are minimal in spite of the news stories about how the new movie has eliminated racist Puerto Rican references. The real change is that the new script provides a more complete backstory for the main characters - Tony is on parole for having almost killed a rival gang member in a previous rumble or fight, Bernardo is a professional prize fighter, Anita and Maria don’t work in a local dress shop but instead Anita works from home as a seamstress and Maria as an overnight cleaner at Gimbels. Chino, Maria’s Bernardo-approved Puerto Rican suitor, is made an accountant-to-be and a more sympathetic character than in the original where he is really just a vehicle for the plot.
Go see it. WSS still has the ability to move you in a multitude of ways and the new movie has the most important element from the original - the music and lyrics. There are just very few musicals that have music this good - Gustav Dudamel does the conducting. And the lyrics keep on giving voice to the basic emotions that still drive human actions - the pride of belonging (When you’re a jet, you’re a jet all the way form your first cigarette to your last dyin’ day), the magic of first love (Maria! Say it loud and there's music playing— Say it soft and it's almost like praying), the impatience of youth (Today, The minutes seem like hours, The hours go so slowly, And still the sky is light . . . Oh moon, grow bright, And make this endless day endless night!) and the longing for a place in this world (There's a place for us, A time and place for us. Hold my hand and we're halfway there. Hold my hand and I'll take you there…Somehow, Some day, Somewhere!)
A big deal was made about the fact that the Puerto Rican characters sometimes speak Spanish with no subtitles - it does add to the authenticity and is perfectly understandable by anyone. The Doc - Valentina switch is more problematic. Played by Rita Moreno who played Anita in the 1961 movie, Valentina sings Somewhere instead of Tony and Maria which makes the reconciliation of Tony and Maria after the rumble seem forced and choppy. Also, by having Valentina and the late Doc as a ‘mixed’ couple (white and Puerto Rican), it diminishes the difficulty and uniqueness of Tony and Maria’s relationship. Also, there has been much written about how the violence of the sexual assault on Anita by the Jets is more realistic than the original movie - not true. In fact, the violence of this scene in the original is much more visceral.
These are minor defects compared to the achievement of bringing this great musical to life for a new generation of cast and crew. Justin Peck did the choreography, borrowing heavily from Jerome Robbins’s original direction. The cast are uniformly very good with a stand-out performance by Mike Faist as Riff.
In the end, we have a new WSS to enjoy and that can’t be anything but good news for fans of the much too Disneyfied movie musicals of our time. It makes one long for more - how about a new Guys and Dolls movie?
Starring: Ana Isabelle, Ansel Elgort, Ariana DeBose, Brian d'Arcy James, Corey Stoll, Curtiss Cook, David Alvarez, Ezra Menas, Jamie Harris, Jamila Velazquez, Josh Andrés Rivera, Kyle Allen, Maddie Ziegler, Mike Faist, Rachel Zegler, Rita Moreno, Talia Ryde
Director: Steven Spielberg
Genre(s): Drama, Romance, Crime, Musical
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 156 min
DOC NYC
THREE TALL LIVES
by armen pandola
The definition of a documentary is pretty bland: a presentation (such as a film or novel) expressing or dealing with factual events. Sad that the word has these connotations when, in fact, documentary films can be and often are much more exciting than most ‘fictional’ movies.
Take three documentaries at this year’s DOC NYC which is showing dozens of great documentaries and is currently showing. Each of these three is about a famous person or family, but each comes at its subject from different perspectives, giving us a new look at familiar faces and lives.
DEAN MARTIN: KING OF COOL
Dino Crochetti made himself into Dean Martin, a much cooler guy than any of the characters he ever played. The film traces Martin’s career from the juke joints he worked in back home in Steubenville, Ohio to the little better than juke joints he worked in in New York and Atlantic City (and yes, he had his nose ‘fixed’). One night at the 500 Club in A.C., he teamed up with a very young comedian, Jerry Lewis, whose schtick was to lip sync to records - usually operatic ones. Neither had much of an act - sure Dino could sing and Jerry could be funny, but so could ten thousand other guys. Together though - well, think Reese cups. Chocolate, good. Peanut butter, good. Chocolate and peanut butter - wow! The combination was perfect because Dino was very cool and, as a relative of Dino’s says when she first met Jerry, ‘he was the first ADD child I ever met.’ When they split up, no one thought Dean could make it on his own - except for Orson Welles who told Peter Bogdanavich that it was Dean who was really the star of the act. Records, movies, TV, Vegas, live concerts all over the world - Dean had one of the most successful careers in show business. Married three times, but had only one lasting love, Jeannie, the Orange Bowl queen he married in the early 50s. But even Jeannie said that she never felt she got to know him. A few years ago, I wrote a musical play bio of Dino that covered much of the same ground - Dino was Dean Martin to the world but to his family and friends he was still Dino Crochetti.
THE REAL CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Charles Chaplin was the greatest comic actor, writer, producer and director of his time - from the infancy of film to the collapse of the studio system in the 1950s. For a long period, he was the most famous person on earth. His creation, The Tramp, was so flexible that he could find himself in a factory, a circus, a boxing ring, a gold rush - the list is endless. And it never didn’t work. Wherever the Tramp went, he found himself immersed in the business of being human. This documentary wants us to know the man behind the Tramp facade. In many ways, they were very similar. Chaplin came from dire poverty in the hovels of late Victorian London. In many respects, he never left there. His politics were never very precise except that he was always for the underdog, for the Tramp. During the shameful period of American history when the FBI spied on every prominent person (probably still do) and tried to ruin the careers of all those who were sympathetic to working people (again, they probably still do) Chaplin was forced to leave the US and prevented from returning. He never fully recovered from the shock.
THE ROSSELLINIS
In 1945, Roberto Rossellini directed Open City, a movie about the Nazi occupation of Rome during World War II. No one had ever seen a movie like it - many thought it was a documentary. It started the neo-realism movement in film and influenced almost all of the new breed of filmmakers who came to prominence in the 60s and 70s. This film examines not the movies, but the man and his family. Married with children, Roberto’s meeting with famous Hollywood actress, Ingrid Bergman, changed both of their lives irretrievably. They both left spouses to live with each other, causing a worldwide scandal. The family that emerged was truly international. This film is made by Alessandro Rossellini, son of the famous director’s son, Renzo, and an African-American dancer, Katherine. Alessandro made the film as a kind of family therapy, all suffering from what he calls ‘Rossellini-itis,’ a disease causing various ailments such as high expectations and constant media scrutiny. Emerging as the modern matriarch is Isabella Rossellini, the famous actress/model. While it is not clear what Alessandro hopes to accomplish in this film, he does show us a modern, international family that has dealt with many of the problems most modern families have to deal with, for example, addiction and wildly different economic fortunes.
IFC NY DOC FESTIVAL
https://www.docnyc.net/
11/15/21
MR. SOUL!
HOW TELEVISION WAS SUPPOSED TO BE
By Armen Pandola
While television was invented before WWII, it blossomed in the U.S. only after the war. At first, the idea of having a means to reach all of the millions of citizens in the U.S., at the same time, was inspiring. People imagined the new medium educating, informing and bringing culture to the masses. No longer would the great cities be the only place where great art, music, theater and temples of learning could be sustained. Now, the entire country could visit the Metropolitan Museum or take in a concert at Carnegie Hall or a lecture in modern physics. Television could be subsidized by the people, for the people and consist of programs made by the people.
Of course, it didn’t quite work out like that. Instead of being a public trust, television went the way of radio. It was dominated by a few powerful ‘networks’ like CBS and NBC. Those networks were commercial enterprises that created programming for the main purpose of selling stuff to people who tuned in. As a result, TV shows, like radio programs, tried to reach as many people as possible, targeting the lowest common denominator in the audience and the broadest possible appeal.
The entire system of mass communication in America became dominated by a few, very rich, very while people and companies. There were a few non-whites allowed on TV, but they had to play the part they were given - variations on Amos ‘n Andy or Beulah the maid.
Into this blizzard of white programming, SOUL!, the first TV show made for people of color by people of color, premiered in 1969 on the National Educational Television (NET), a television network that was owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It was succeeded by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
SOUL! was created by Ellis Haizlip, a theater producer who was at the forefront of the Black Arts Movement. The hour-long program had a ‘Tonight Show’ format featuring performances by then-unknown artists like Patti Labelle and Ashford and Simpson along with established stars like Stevie Wonder and Harry Belefonte. But SOUL was more than a black Tonight Show - it featured poetry and dance and lengthy interviews with black leaders such as Muhammad Ali, Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, James Baldwin and Kathleen Cleaver.
Now, SOUL! is captured in a documentary, MR. SOUL! produced, written and directed by documentary filmmaker Melissa Haizlip - and with Ms. Haizlip in the driver’s seat, the film concentrates on the career of Ellis Haizlip. There are numerous tributes by black leaders, past and present which can best be summarized by Valerie Simpson’s simple statement, “What he saw in us, we hadn’t seen in ourselves.”
And that is what made Haizlip such a great host - he saw things that few others saw in the black poetry, dance and music of his time. He created an outlet for artists and for thinkers to showcase their wares on a medium that rarely showed wares more complicated than Mr. Clean.
It lasted for five seasons and was eventually cancelled even though it was estimated that 65% of black households tuned in every week. The documentary suggests that the newly installed Nixon administration pressured the new PBS network into dumping the only show on TV dedicated to The Black Experience. There have been few, if any, others since.
Mr. Soul! will premiere on HBO MAX on August 1, 2021.
9/11 : ONE DAY IN AMERICA at AFI DOCS
By armen pandola
What makes a great documentary?
It's a movie that is more real than the most realistic fictional movie you have ever seen. It's a movie that is more human than anything anyone has ever made up. It's more than a movie - it's a bundle of reality, of places and times and people.
The new documentary, 9/11: One Day in America, is about that most infamous day in recent American history. If you are like most people, you don't want to relive that day. And to a certain extent, the media has acknowledged that reluctance by sanitizing most videos and photos of that terrible day.
But 9/11 is about more than the horrors, the deaths, the terror of that day - it's about the incredible resilience and heroism of ordinary people on an extraordinary day, in an extraordinary place and at an extraordinary time.
9/11 is a movie that reveals things about something you think you know everything about, but don't. For example, did you know that there was a Marriott Hotel between the two towers? No, well, you'll hear the story of a man who was at work in its kitchen that morning and how he entered the frozen storage box to get supplies and was, effectively, in isolation for the first fifteen minutes after the first plane struck the north tower. When he went into the box, there were dozens of people in the kitchen busily getting meals ready; when he came out, there was no one there.
9/11 will tell you the story of the Fire Battalion Chief who was in lower Manhattan that morning with his firemen trying to track down a suspected gas leak. A film crew happened to be with him that day, and so we see his reaction and the reaction of his men as a huge airliner makes a terrifying bang as it passes them and then explodes into the north tower. From the beginning, he knew it was not an accident, but an attack.
There are stories of ordinary people putting themselves into harm's way to help someone, often a stranger. There are videos of the panic that is palpable as the second tower is struck by another passenger jet. There is video of dozens of people diving out of windows 80 stories up rather than face the flames that engulfed the upper towers. And there is video of the terror that overtook everyone when at 9:59 a.m. the south tower collapsed. And here, reality imitates art as crowds of people are running toward the camera, being chased by a suffocating wall of concrete, glass, dust and debris that was the south tower and that is gaining on them as they run in terror.
9/11 allows its witnesses to speak directly to the viewer, often in their own homes. There is no need to embellish their stories with film techniques or gimmicks. What they have to tell us comes right from the heart. It's a story they will never forget that happened on a day none of us will ever forget.
9/11 has been examined and discussed and relived many, many times and no doubt will continue to be. T.S. Eliot said it best:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
9/11 will help you see that day for the first time, again.
Director: Daniel Bogado
Producer: Caroline Marsden
Executive Producers: David Glover, Dan Lindsay, T.J. Martin
Directors of Photography: Brandon Widener, Duane McClunie, Stefan Wiesen
Editor: Chris Nicholls
Music: David Schweitzer
Running Time (minutes): 163
FIRST THREE OF SIX EPISODES AVAILABLE NOW AT AFI DOCS.
AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE'S DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL
By Armen Pandola
Streaming TV has ushered in many changes, especially during the pandemic year, but no branch of the film community has witnessed more change than documentary films.
Quite simply, in the past, there was no place to watch documentary films. Oh sure, PBS has series like Independent Lens and Frontline that were top shelf and made a brand name of one documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns, but all of that was just a drop in the bucket of documentaries produced.
Take the movies made in 2000. Gladiator won the Oscar for Best Picture while Steven Soderbergh won Best Director for Traffic. You remember those movies, right? How about Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer? That movie was about the British program during WWII of rescuing Jewish children from Germany and won Best Documentary Feature. Remember? Of course not. Never saw or even heard of it because there was no place to watch it.
Jump ahead to 2020. You may remember that Nomadland and its director Chloé Zhao won the Oscars for Best Picture and Director. And you probably also remember that the Best Documentary Feature Oscar went to My Octopus Teacher produced by Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed, and Craig Foster. That’s because you were able to watch on Netflix that great documentary about how an octopus helped a man cope with his life and its tribulations.
And the pandemic changed something else - it forced Film Festivals to go online.
That brings us to this year’s AFI DOCS 2021 Festival from June 22 - June 27. You can buy a ticket to watch an individual film for $10 and watch the movie online via your computer or TV. And you’ll have 48 hours to watch it at your own pace and at your most convenient time.
This year’s theme is Be Moved. Be Connected. Be Transformed. The theme is perfectly embodied in the Festival’s major series, 9/11. The Festival has the first three episodes of this harrowing and extensive multi-part docuseries, revealing the collective trauma and humanity of that dark day in America.
Here are a few of the films that caught my eye:
DAUGHTER OF A LOST BIRD is about Kendra, a Native American who was adopted and grew up in suburbia America. The film follows her journey to discover her heritage.
DELPHINE’S PRAYERS is about a 30-year old Cameroonian woman who tells us of her life in a country that most of us know very little about. It is more than a story - it’s an indictment of our world where we can close our eyes to the suffering that is just outside our very selective field of vision.
LFG is about the women soccer players on the US women’s national soccer team who have won four championships but still cannot get paid even a fraction of what their male counterparts make. In another country, this might lead to negotiations and bargaining; in the US, it’s a class action lawsuit for equality.
THE NEUTRAL GROUND follows comedian and satirist CJ Hunt (THE DAILY SHOW) as he goes through the country trying to understand why there are so many monuments to Confederate Civil War heroes or as they would be known anywhere else on earth - murderous slave masters.
NO STRAIGHT LINES is about one of my favorite things - comics or cartoons. The fight for recognition by LGBT comic artists was not much fun but the result was a perfect storm of artists like Alison Bechdel (FUN HOME) changing the way that America sees itself.
THE SLOW HUSTLE Baltimore’s establishment is shaken by the murder of a police officer who may have been about to testify against corrupt colleagues. This film is a gripping story of dirty cops, cover-ups and a failed political establishment - it could have been a script for THE WIRE.
SUMMER OF SOUL (. . .OR WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED) In 1969, Woodstock was for the (mostly) white American flower children - but this film is about the Harlem Cultural Festival, held that same year with performances by Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples, Sly & the Family Stone, Nina Simone and others.
There are six different SHORTS PROGRAMS with short documentaries about everything from the stages of opera to the fields of football.
AND THERE IS MORE - AND IT’S FREE!
Six short films produced as part of the Hindsight Project which chronicles the experiences of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities in the American South and U.S. Territories during the unprecedented events of 2020, Hindsight is a new nonfiction short film series that explores the cultural shifts, community ingenuity and pivotal conversations defining this moment in America. This is a free program that launches at Noon EDT on June 23 and is available to unlock until 11:59 p.m. EDT on June 27 or until it sells out, whichever comes first.
The Guggenheim Symposium honors a master of the nonfiction art form, filmmaker Dawn Porter, featuring clips from her acclaimed work and a free screening of her most recent project, RISE AGAIN: TULSA AND THE RED SUMMER. This is a Free event on June 23.
So, take a look at its website - https://docs.afi.com/ - and pick a couple of great documentaries to watch.
WE ARE ONE ONLINE FILM FESTIVAL
WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY!
The Coronavirus is changing the world - for ill and for good.
One of the good things is that it has accelerated the emergence of new ways of doing things based on the technology of our times.
Large organizations, such as film festivals, are stuck in the world that its creators or its management were born into. Film Festivals take place in one location, often exotic like Cannes, FR or Venice, IT, at one time and with a decidedly elitist point of view - the powerbrokers of the movie business control the entire event.
But today, there is no need for a film festival to be tied to a place or even a time and the “powerbrokers” of the movie business change as often the new technology changes - who foresaw Netflix as a dominant player? Nobody at the staid Fortune magazine which predicted in 2012: With Amazon (AMZN) Prime Instant Video, Walmart's (WMT) Vudu, and even HBO Go gaining popularity in the streaming space, Netflix isn't nearly as important as it once was. Wrong.
So now that the pandemic has forced the hands of the powers that be - WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY!
WE ARE ONE is a FREE, ONLINE festival. The 10-day online festival is from May 29 - June 7 on www.youtube.com/weareone. Each film or program will have a first screening at a scheduled time but don’t worry if you miss it! Many of the films will be available on VOD to watch at your leisure through the course of the festival.
The list of participating festivals is impressive:
Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Guadalajara International Film Festival, International Film Festival & Awards Macao (IFFAM), International Film Festival Rotterdam, Jerusalem Film Festival, Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI), Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Marrakech International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, San Sebastian International Film Festival, Sarajevo Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Tokyo International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and Venice Film Festival.
During the next ten days itsjustamovie.com will be reviewing movies daily and giving you a heads up on the best movies.
If you will be watching on your laptop, computer or phone, remember to check your settings and use an HD speed or the highest you can use. Some of these films are made in 3D and you will see in the upper left-hand corner of the screen a directional button so you can manipulate the screen to see in every direction.
If you have the YouTube streaming channel on your TV, you can watch there or Chromecast from any device.
Today, I recommend Annecy Shorts for Families, three animated shorts curated by the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and produced by DreamWorks that will be favorites of the whole family.
The first is Bilby from DreamWorks Animation Studios. Do you know what a bilby is? Neither did I. It's one of those native to Australia marsupials that are like nothing else you've ever seen. Our Bilby finds a helpless baby bird in the deadly desert of Australia and somehow becomes its guardian. The animation is DreamWorks so you know it is good and the story is Chaplin-esque - in fact, all three of these animated shorts owe a great deal to the great silent comics, Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton (on TCM you can watch a fine documentary about Buster Keaton directed by Peter Bogdonavich - The Great Buster (2018)).
Bird Karma is the story is about a long-legged bird who is successfully and contentedly fishing in a pond when a beautiful golden fish catches its bird eyes. Our long-legged friend must have that fish and in the course of its quest, it transforms its world and itself.
Marooned is about a robot stranded on an abandoned lunar outpost in the not-too-distant future. It longs to return to Earth, but being alone it finds it difficult to rebuild its spaceship. One day, it happens on a child-like robot who helps it, but all may be in vain as there is not enough power to get both back to earth.
WE ARE ONE is full of movies that are a treat to watch visually, like Jérôme Blanquet's Alteration. Alexandro (Bill Skarsgård) volunteers for an experiment to aid scientists with the study of dreams in order to earn some money to pay for the baby his artist/girfriend (Lizzie Brocheré) is about to have. The plot is not half as interesting on the imagery - make sure you crank up your streaming speed to get the most out of this strange, beautiful 20 minute film. Michael J. Goldberg's Egg is a wild fantasy about the adventures of an egg, a good egg. Nabwanna IGG's Crazy World is about child kung fu masters who face off with the evil Tiger Mafia in this action flick from Uganda's no-budget, gonzo super-studio, Wakaliwood. If you like action - this is the movie for you. Then there are fine documentaries like Roger Ross Williams' Traveling While Black, a kind of primer for the Oscar-winning Green Book, it details the long history of restricted movement in the USA for Black Americans.
And the best part of this free, online festival is - if you don't like something, no big deal, click off and move on!
FILM AND CULTURE
by Armen Pandola
A nation's films tell us a lot about it. In almost every movie, a piece of a nation's culture is revealed. We have been exporting American culture throughout the world and for much of the 20th century, American movies, TV and music dominated the airways. That is changing.
The WE ARE ONE film festival allows us to look at the movies of other cultures and two of them reveal cultures as different as India and Israel.
In Prateek Vats' Eeb Allay Ooo, Anjani (Shardul Bhardwaj), plays a young migrant in New Delhi who has the job of monkey repeller - yes, you read that right, monkey repeller. In India, monkeys are treated as messengers from god and are sacred. As such, they roam New Delhi's government center with impudence and must be repelled - but gently. Anjani must mimic aggressive langurs, the monkeys' natural enemies, with langur sounds - ”eeb,” “allay,” and “ooo.” Anjani lives in a village outside New Delhi with his pregnant ill nourished sister, (Nutan Sinha) and brother-in-law cop (Shashi Bhushan). Their tiny home serves as his sister's workplace, bagging spices for sale. The squalor of their lives is matched only by its uncertainty - each of them is desperate to keep their employment in a place where unemployment means almost certain death. Their employers know this and it is not unusual to see a boss physically reprimand an employee.
Eeb Allay Ooo shows us a world unlike anything in America. It does so with a mixture of comedy and drama that mimics the lives it portrays, full of laughter, fear and despair. This is not the new India with a booming tech economy, but the India of over 1.3 billion people and a GDP per capita ranked 139th in the world. It's a vibrant dangerous place where mobs can kill a person who dares injure a monkey. It is a place much like the rest of the world outside of our western world bubble. It's time to take a look.
Dover Kosashvili's Late Marriage is an Israeli movie about love, family and passion. Zaza (Lior Ashkenazi), a 31 year old PhD student at Tel Aviv University has never grown up - he studies philosophy and is totally dependent on his parents (Moni Moshonov and Lili Kosashvili - the director’s mother) who shop him around to dozens of prospective brides. Meanwhile Zaza is having a passionate affair with Judith (Ronit Elkabetz), a Moroccan divorcée with a six-year-old daughter (Sapir Kugman). When he rejects another potential bride, his family decides to confront the truth and that's when the movie really begins.
Late Marriage shows us a world very different than our love-is-all fairy-tale marriage one. It's a culture that prizes family and tradition above individual happiness - or rather a culture that believes strong family ties and upholding traditions is the only true path to happiness.
Taking a long look at the world outside of our own helps us to keep our vision clear - like looking at faraway horizons helps maintain healthy eyesight. Try it - you'll never look at things the same.
THE LAST THING HE WANTED - To Watch This Movie? ⭐️
by armen pandola
Do you know that well-known Chinese curse: Be careful what you wish for, you may get it?
I have read that the star and director of The Last Thing He Wanted (TLTHW) made the movie they wanted to make with no interference from 'the suits.' That should have made me suspicious, immediately. The fact is, based on many 'director's cuts' I have seen, 'the suits' usually cut out the dross. In the case of TLTHW, that would have left them with a two minute movie.
Based on Joan Didion's 1996 novel of the same name, the story is about a reporter (Ann Hathaway) in 1984 who is covering that year's Presidential election between Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan - but she is unhappy because she wants to continue reporting on the CIA's war in Central America to keep tyrants in power.
Her father (William Defoe) is dying or sinking into senility, but seems to have gotten himself into an arms deal selling weapons to - well, somebody in Central America. It's his last chance to make a big score, but he's incapable of pulling it off, so he sends his only child to finish the deal.
Along the way, a CIA guy (Ben Affleck) and the reporter meet and, of course, end up in bed - has anyone in Hollywood realized that when a man and woman meet, even if the guy is Hollywood handsome, they don't always end up in bed? One of the great spoofs of Hollywood was made by Hollywood's own pirrah, Preston Sturges, the director/writer of Sullivan's Travels about a director who wants to find real people stories and ends up on a chain gang in the South in the 1930s. Here is Sullivan's conversation with a studio executive about a new project:
Sullivan: I want this picture to be a commentary on modern conditions. Stark realism. The problems that confront the average man!
LeBrand: But with a little sex in it.
Sullivan: A little, but I don’t want to stress it. I want this picture to be a document. I want to hold a mirror up to life. I want this to be a picture of dignity! A true canvas of the suffering of humanity!
LeBrand: But with a little sex in it.
Sullivan: [reluctantly] With a little sex in it.
LeBrand: How ‘bout a nice musical?
That was written almost 80 years ago - 80! Not much has changed.
Back to TLTHW. Supposedly Ben Affleck replaced Nicholas Cage who dropped out at the last minute, perhaps the only wise movie choice Cage has made in decades. Many reviews of the movie trumpet how the reviewer will 'explain' the plot. Let me do that for you: have you seen All The President's Men or any other movie about a reporter who has to fight her editors and the government but, finally, succeeds and truth and goodness triumph? TLTHW is just like that, but not good.
Finally, I have to say this since no one else seems to want to - Ann Hathaway is not a very good actress. Yes, she won an Oscar and yes, she has big button eyes, but she cannot act. The torrid romance between Aflleck and her has all the sizzle of a pan full of tofu. Both seem to be trying to out deadpan the other as each expresses all the emotions from A to B (sorry Ms. Parker, but luckily you are no longer with us and so can rest in peace).
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe as Richard McMahon, Edi Gathegi,
And Rosie Perez.
Director: Dee Rees
Writer (novel): Joan Didion Screenplay: Dee Rees and Marco Villalobos
Cinematographer: Bobby Bukowski
Editor: Mako Kamitsuna
Composer: Tamar-kali
AMERICAN FACTORY - BACK TO THE FUTURE
By armen pandola
Have you ever worked in a factory? I mean a real factory, not the office version.
My Aunt Esther was a charter member of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union (founded in 1926) and worked in a sweatshop or clothing factory for sixty years, from when she was 12 years old. Even when the work week changed to five days, she still worked a half a day on Saturday. As a very young boy, I loved going with her on Saturdays - a child can make almost anything into play, even a sweatshop. Later on, in the summer break while in college, I worked in a factory that made metal plates that were put on cars to advertise the dealership where they were purchased.
It is difficult to describe how inhuman most factory work is. For example, in the clothing factory, my Aunt had to put small colored tags on pieces of cloth to identify where they went in the factory. To do this, she operated what was, essentially, a large, powerful stapler that used large metal staples. The trick to making money was to do it as fast as you could without getting your finger caught and a large staple pressed into your fingernail, with the points coming out on the pad of your finger. My aunt could do several thousand a day. In the plate factory, my job was to take a metal basketful of name plates and dip them into a vat of acid to remove excess. It would take 2 or 3 baths for me to get the smell of the acid off of me when I got home.
Today, factories are very different, but still not the most pleasant places to work.
Netflix' American Factory is a documentary (110 minutes) about one factory in Dayton, Ohio that GM closed in 2008. It reopened in 2014 when a chinese company, Fuyao, opened it to make auto glass. The filmmakers, Steven Bognarand Julia Reichert, have been making documentaries for almost 50 years, and this is her fourth Oscar nominated film. It shows. American Factory is well-made and tells its story simply yet powerfully.
Fuyao imported a couple of hundred Chinese workers to supervise the 2000+ Americans it hired and the documentary shows how the two cultures, Chinese and American, fashioned a strange marriage of convenience. The Chinese were contemptuous of Americans. Their judgment was that Americans are lazy, over-confident (from a young age they are told by their families how wonderful they are), egotistical and not easy to manage. The Chinese marvel that the Americans can refuse to work overtime or refuse an order if the task seems dangerous or if it will violate the law (one American says that the Chinese simply pour chemical waste and unused paint down the drain.)
The 'star' of the documentary is Fuyao's billionaire chairman, Cho Tak Wong. He moves around the factory dispensing orders which must be obeyed without question. His sole interest is to make the American factory profitable - why else would he come half-way around the world to open a factory in a strange country? Oddly, we see him in his lavish home in China where he ponders whether he has made the world better and longs for the simple world of his youth. Of course, this altruistic attitude never quite makes it to the factory floor where workers are forced to speed up production no matter what the cost in increased injuries.
America is strange to the Chinese. While the Chinese have an almost child-like devotion to their employer - singing songs about it and starting the work day with a military-style calling of the roll, all very 1984ish - the Americans look on with a wary eye as they are shown videos on large TV screens distributed around the factory of happy children playing in a world made happy by Fuyao.
For the Americans, the reopening of the plant was a blessing, especially to the many who had been unemployed ever since the GM plant closed. The blessing has strings - like making less than one-half what they made before (most now make about $13/hr). We follow a few workers who go from having almost nothing to getting a job that allows them some independence to getting fired or 'terminated' by Fuyao for not working hard enough.
When the United Auto Workers union comes around, the older workers who know the benefits of a union sign up. Fuyao uses every power they have to keep out the union, from firing pro-union workers (later Fuyao paid a fine since this is illegal under US law) to giving impromptu small raises to hiring a company called Labor Relations Institute Inc which is a 'union dissuading company.' LRI was paid more than $750,000 and, I will let you guess who wins that battle - come on, you know.
American Factory is about the transition of the American worker. In the early 20th century most American workers were immigrants, few could speak English. Then, those workers' children and grandchildren came back from WWII to make for the middle-class the greatest era of prosperity the world has ever known. Unions were in the forefront representing 35% of workers in the private sector. Now it's about 6.5% and we have the largest gap between rich and poor since the pre-union Gilded Age. American blue collar workers are back to where they started - the only difference is that, now, they speak better English than the owners.
1917 - The Best Picture of the Year?
by armen pandola
Do you like war movies? What are your favorites?
If you like war movies and Saving Private Ryan or The Paths of Glory or even The Longest Day are among your favorites, then you will like !917, directed and co-written by Sam Mendes. If you don't, chances are, 1917 will not make a believer of you in spite of the fact that it is an odds-on favorite to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
Mendes won an Oscar for his first feature film, American Beauty, which no one watches any longer because it starred Kevin Spacey and because his character, a middle-aged man on the brink of a breakdown, has sexual fantasies about his teenage daughter's friend.
Since then, Mendes has directed a couple of good movies (Road to Perdition and Revolutionary Road), a couple of so-so movies (Jarhead and Away We Go) and a couple of Bond movies (Spectre and Skyfall). He comes from the theatre and continues to direct for the stage. 1917 is his first co-writing credit.
So, what does 1917 bring to the 'war movie' table that wasn't there already?
Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old has all of the horror of World War I, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory has all of its despicable commanders, All Quiet on the Western Front (1931) has the folly of its 'patriots' and Gallipoli (1981) has the tragedy of senseless slaughter. What else is there to say or show?
Mendes brings us a war movie that follows two soldiers for one day, keeping his camera on only these two and what they see and experience. Shot in segments several minutes long, the movie is stitched together seamlessly - or seemingly so. From its opening to its closing, the camera stays focused on the two protagonists. What does this add to the movie?
'Tracking shots' are shots that go on for a minute or more without the action stopping in order to set-up a new shot. Alfred Hitchcock shot one of his least successful movies, Rope, the story of two rich kids who kill someone for the fun of it, in a few very long takes. Orson Welles starts off Touch of Evil with a three and a half minute tracking shot that ends in an explosion. Paths of Glory has a shorter (91 seconds) tracking shot of a general walking through the trenches. Scorsese's Goodfellas has a three minute tracking shot of Henry Hill and Karen walking through the kitchen of the Copacabana to front row seats. If you have noticed such scenes, then you are probably a film buff.
What do tracking shots add to a movie? In the movies I have mentioned, long tracking shots have furthered the story. For example, in Goodfellas, the long tracking shot shows us how Henry, a small-time mobster, has special privileges because of his insider status, privileges that impress his date, Karen.
What has filming 1917 like one long sequence added to its message? It has focused our attention on two soldiers and two soldiers alone. This is a view of war from the bottom up. The stench and mud and rats are brought to the fore as two young corporals, Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay), undertake a mission to save sixteen hundred fellow soldiers from a senseless slaughter. Sadly, Mendes decides to add to the mix a few 'special appearances' from famous actors a la The Longest Day (1962). The movie stops dead for brief appearances by Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch and Mark Strong, taking us out of the gory frontlines and into the world of make-believe.
There is not much depth in 1917. Two soldiers are given what seems to be a suicide mission which one of them is eager to undertake because he has a personal motive - his brother is one of the soldiers who may be saved. Along the way, we are told small bits and pieces of their lives. They are not especially memorable, and the self-imposed technical limitations make it impossible for us to have a fully rounded portrait of them. In the end, they are just two soldiers, much like millions of others who were fighting on both sides - and dying. And that is 1917's virtue and its limitation. Given its narrow scope, 1917 can only appeal to our most sentimental feelings.
The best war movie that I have ever seen has not been in circulation in years - there are some pirated versions available on Amazon. The Victors is a 1963 British-American WWII movie written, produced and directed by Carl Foreman, starring George Peppard, George Hamilton, Melina Mercouri, Jeanne Moreau, Elke Sommer and Eli Wallach - yes, an odd cast, but an excellent one. The movie dares to be an anti-war movie in an era when such feelings were suppressed. WWII was the 'good war,' yet there was no sentimentality in The Victors - in fact, it showed the execution by firing squad of a GI deserter (a scene inspired by the real-life 1945 execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovik).
In The Victors, war didn't make the men 'better' or more 'giving' or 'caring.' War did to the young men it trapped exactly what violence does to young men - it makes them worse, not better. There is a scene in which a new member of the squad finds a dog and starts to take care of it. When the squad pulls out of its camp, the sergeant tells the young soldier that no dogs are allowed on the trucks. As the young recruit sadly sits in the truck with his fellow soldiers, one hardened veteran tells the recruit to call the dog, so the recruit whistles to the dog, thinking they will hide it on the truck. Instead, the veteran shots it. That's what war does to young men, at least those who survive. The Victors won no awards for presenting war as it is - and The Victors has been forgotten. A great loss.
THE FOUR POPES
By Armen Pandola
Movies can re-make reality. Who can separate the real Winston Churchill, an arch-conservative who hated even the idea of freedom for India or Ireland from the many fictional film Churchills who fought for freedom against its greatest foe in modern times? In America, we have the real President Kennedy whose first term as President was a disaster contrasted with the golden boy/man of film and fiction.
Today, every famous character has a dual personality - one that exists in the real world and one that exists in the ether, that place where all is born of the human imagination.
And so with Netflix's The Two Popes, directed by Fernando Meirelles and written by Anthony McCarten from his own play. The story pits conservative former Pope Benedict XVI against progressive current Pope Francis I, formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (like Super Bowls, Popes are enumerated by the eternal roman numerals of a bygone empire - for those who did not have to endure Latin classes, it's Benedict the 16th and Francis the 1st). There is a real and imagined Pope Benedict and Pope Francis - so we have four popes.
The dramatic force of this movie is Cardinal Bergoglio's desire to retire during the papacy of Benedict. This is ironic since, eventually, Benedict 'retires' from the papacy, something that no pope has done in over seven hundred years. And while Benedict had nothing to do with the election of Francis as his successor, it is implied that he resigned so that Francis could become pope.
Francis travels from his home in Bueno Aires, Argentina to Rome to get permission from the Pope to retire. From the beginning, McCarten ignores facts to make dramatic points - Bergoglio did not need the Pope's permission to retire. There has been much criticism of this movie based on its ignoring of many facts to heighten the drama, but, in the end, the movie works as a drama or it is nothing so it is hard to blame McCarten for taking liberties.
At its heart, this is a buddy movie, pairing two very dissimilar people together to make dramatic hay from the combination. The original popular buddy story is The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas père. Buddy movies have been around since Chaplin's The Kid and many have been super hits like Casablanca, Butch Cassidy, Midnight Run, 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon, The Sting, The Shawshank Redemption, etc.
Simply put, Pope Benedict thinks the Catholic Church's problems have been caused by too much compromise with the modern world and Francis believes the problems are caused by the Church's refusal to enter the 20th let alone the 21st century. Whatever the cause, the Church has been in decline for decades and the reasons are many. This movie reflects the debate about the causes: some, for example, believe it is caused by too much liberalism and others by too little.
So how does The Two Popes keep from becoming a kind of long, boring Firing Line? Two reasons, Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce. They play Benedict and Francis and bring whatever life there is to the story. While Benedict's past as a member of the Nazi Youth in his native Germany (he was forced to do this) is not given much play, Francis' story is told in flashback, showing him about to be engaged to marry, then deciding against it when he 'receives a message from god.' Francis is the first Jesuit priest to become pope - Jesuits are specially trained and it takes many more years of education than a regular priest. He becomes head of the Jesuit order in Argentina and gets cozy with the military junta that overthrew the democratically elected government and killed or tortured tens of thousands who opposed its reign. Of course, his past is whitewashed in the movie - he tells Benedict that he could never become pope because he could never forgive himself. Benedict tells him that only God is perfect, and that seems to change his mind - so much for his eternal regret at what he did.
Benedict tells Francis about his own sins - he knew that certain priests were abusing boys and did nothing about it. While the actual reason for Benedict retiring as pope is not stated in this movie, it is suggested that it as atonement for his sin in allowing this to continue.
Is this movie worth watching? Lots of critics think so based on the performances of the two leads. In the end, it is a disappointment. It doesn't take itself seriously enough to be honest about its two main characters who have gotten to be popes, in part, because of their past concessions to the powerful who rule the Church and the world in which the church must exist. Every day, the Church becomes less and less relevant to our world and no amount of pious speeches by popes is going to change that. Even a fictional character like Pope Francis in this movie is not enough of a follower of Christ to do his work:
And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
Matthew 21:12–13
BOMBSHELL ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️By Armen Pandola
In Graham Greene's The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed, an American writer of westerns with the improbable name Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) travels to post-WWII Vienna to work with his childhood friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). When he arrives, he discovers that Lime is dead and the police think Lime committed heinous crimes. Martins tells a book club audience that he is writing a new book based on his late friend's adventures. A shadowy business associate of the late Lime tells him that he is doing something very dangerous - mixing fact with fiction. He threatens Martins by advising him to stick to fiction, pure fiction.
In Bombshell, screenwriter Charles Randolph (The Big Short) dangeruously combines the story of two actual victims of sexual harassment by Fox News creator and CEO Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) with fictional characters who are victims of Ailes' scabrous sexual appetite. Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is a star at Fox but her unwillingness to continue to succumb to Ailes' advances leaves her without a friend at Fox and she is demoted to an afternoon show and then to the door. Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) is the rising star at Fox who has been similarly 'Ailesed' and makes the mistake of asking Ailes' other creation, Donald Trump, some embarrassing questions about his demeaning of women. The third member of this trio of graces is Kayla Popisil (Margot Robbie), a fictional character who, the author claims, is a composite of many women at Fox who were forced to kneel at the altar of Ailes.
For those who have not drunk the Kool Aid, sympathizing with Carlson and Kelly is a tough sell. Sure, no matter what your politics, you have a right to be free of licentious bosses, but - and this is a big BUT - It is difficult to work up a lot of indignation for women who made their careers spouting right-wing/religious prattle while kow-towing to the sexual fantasies of men who ran Fox.
Bombshell director Jay Roach (Meet the Fockers, Austin Powers) tries to keep things light and fast. The only scene of actual sexual harassment that is shown is Ailes forcing Popisil to lift her already short skirt up to reveal her panty. But this scene occurs only after Popisil has followed Ailes' pimp/secretary into the elevator with the intention of getting noticed and sent into the liars' den, Ailes' office. Of course, she didn't know what was going to be expected of her, but she was already in an organization that exploited its women and made no secret of the fact that it wished the feminist movement ill. So, in a movie about work-place sexual harassment, the most powerful scene in the movie is a phone call that Popisil has with her cubicle partner, Jess Carr (Kate Mckinnon) in which she reveals that she has succumbed to Ailes' advances and had sex with him. I cannot imagine that this would have been the case if a woman was hired to direct or write the script. Why are we still allowing Hollywood men to tell these stories?
Bombshell wants to tell this powerful story of sex and TV, but without too much politics. It follows on the heels of Showtimes' The Loudest Voice with a bravura performance by Russell Crowe as Ailes. While TLV concentrated on Carlson (Naomi Watts), Bombshell focuses on Kelly and fictional Popisil. Kelly's husband (Mark Duplass) is in a few scenes in which he tries to protect his wife from right-wing bullies, but, ultimately, he is disappointed in how his wife deals with the blowback from her confrontation with Trump - but that is the point! Kelly got where she was at Fox because she knew how to play that game.
Carlson is fired at the beginning of the movie and her quest to get other harassed Fox female employees to come forward is the driving force of the movie. The performances are pitch-perfect and, as opposed to The Irishman, the accents and make-up match the acting. As they use to say in movie publicity ads, Charlize Theron IS Megyn Kelly!
Bombshell ends with Ailes getting the boot from the boss, Rupert Murdoch (Malcolm Mcdowell), Carlson gets her humongous settlement, Kelly does the right thing and the fictional Popisil rides off into the fictional horizon. A blurb tells us that Fox paid $50 million to various women to settle harassment claims, but $65 million to Ailes as a parting kiss.
I liked Bombshell, but it could have been better. Ailes did not exist in a vacuum - it takes an entire company to make a serial sexual predator. The entire Fox phenomenon and culture was to blame. There was and is nothing that Fox will not do to feed and grow its audience of right-wing, conspiracy-loving, women-hating, war-mongering red-state viewers. Sure, a lot of very good people watch Fox, but these very good people have to ignore a whole lot of nasty behavior by Fox men, just as the female Trumpsters have to ignore almost every tweet, speech and diatribe by the Predator-in-Chief. That is the real story - not what happened, but how and why it happened. We're still waiting for that movie.
MARRIAGE STORY by Armen Pandola
Netflix's Marriage Story, written and directed by Noah Baumback (The Meyerowitz Stories) and starring Scarlett Johansson as Nicole and Adam Driver as Charlie, tells the story of the divorce of two young artists at the beginning of their careers. She is a young actress known for a topless scene in her last movie (this is according to the people in this movie) and he is an avant garde theater director and head of his own company in New York City. When they meet by chance, they fall in love and she moves to NYC where she becomes the 'draw' for his theater company. Eventually, they have a son. At the beginning of the movie, they are getting a divorce after 10 years and are seeing a mediator in the hope of having a friendly divorce.
Is it a spoiler to tell you that a friendly divorce is rarer than a vegetarian meal at Mar-a-Lago? I knew a couple who mediated their divorce and everything was going well until they got to the jazz album collection (this was back in the day) which they were to split evenly. He objected - she didn't know Dizzy Gillespie from Dizzy Dean when I met her. She countered - yes, he introduced me to jazz but I was the one who actually bought and cared for our collection of over a 1000 albums - if it were up to him, he'd still be using his albums as coasters at the drunken parties he and his friends threw every week. And so much for mediation.
The upshot of Marriage Story is that good people get divorced and often do terrible things, things they'd never dream of doing except for the divorce. And that's what happens to Nicole and Charlie. The contested divorce legal process is unfair and incredibly expensive. Laura Dern is Nicole's lawyer and she explains to Nicole that she cannot admit to any wrong-doing or even any flaws since our world treats women/wives/mothers so differently than men/husbands/fathers. Women/wives/mothers must be like Mary, mother of Christ and a virgin to boot. Men are like Joseph - who is absent when the going gets tough and isn't even the actual father who is away somewhere doing whatever it is that gods do.
The other side is represented by Ray Liotta who tells Charlie that he had better get ready to be demonized and pay legal bills and costs that would make a lottery winner cringe. At first, Charlie is represented by a nice lawyer played by Alan Alda who tells him, "We have to prepare to go to court hoping we don't go to court." When Charlie sees that Dern is crushing Alda at a meeting, he switches to Liotta who can talk faster and be meaner than anybody else.
Along the way, there's a custody dispute. At the very beginning of the divorce, Nicole goes to LA to do a TV pilot (her first acting job outside her husband's company in a decade) and takes their son with her. The expectation is that she will return to NYC when the pilot is completed but then - she doesn't. Her family is in LA where she grew up and made a career as an actress. The money is exponentially better than doing theatre work. So, Charlie can only see his son by traveling cross country on weekends. As is usual in divorces where there are children, the child becomes the center of the divorce with each side claiming that it knows best for the child. Of course, the divorce is devastating to children, but that is a different movie and Baumbach concentrates on the adults.
It gets complicated quickly. The heart of the story is told in long takes where both Johansson and Driver communicate their rage at what is happening to them and the man/woman they loved. These longs takes show both Johansson and Driver's acting chops - each of them is able to build a scene to the point where real emotions are on display. The hateful argument they have at the end of the divorce process is contrasted with the tender affection for both their partner's qualities and deficiencies that they talk about at the beginning of the process. In fact, it is probably true to say that if you can find a person who loves not only your wit and charm, but your surliness and bad habits, then you should chase him/her until you catch him/her because that is the person who loves you.
Two songs from Sondheim's Company are sung - "You Could Drive a Person Crazy" by Nicole and her actress mother and actress sister, played beautifully by the under-appreciated Julie Haggerty and Merritt Wever, and "Being Alive" from the same musical sung by Driver. Each song speaks to what their characters are feeling about each other. Strangely, in Company, there is even a more appropriate song they could have sung - The Little Things You Do Together:
It's the little things you share together,
Swear together,
Wear together,
That make perfect relationships.
The concerts you enjoy together,
Neighbors you annoy together,
Children you destroy together,
That keep marriage intact.
It's not talk of God and the decade ahead that
Allows you to get through the worst.
It's "I do" and "you don't" and "nobody said that"
And "who brought the subject up first?"
It's the little things,
The little things, the little things, the little things.
There is so much to recommend this movie that I hesitate to mention a few missteps. While money is mentioned, often, it isn't really talked about in substance. The fact is that many people never recover, financially, from a divorce. This is partially solved in the movie by a gift from the gods that drops in their lap during the divorce. A bigger problem is that Baumbach wants it both ways - the great angry scenes where people say things to each other that they don't mean, but once said can never be unsaid, and the happy ending. One of the best angry arguments that Nicole and Charlie have is negated by their embrace at its end. The fact is that arguments drive people further apart and don't end in an embrace but, usually, a slammed door. There are some maudlin scenes whose purpose is to show that they have moved on with their lives and are doing fine, and still think of each other with love and affection. And a divorce that ends that way is rarer than a 2-for-1 meal at Mar-a-Lago.
THE IRISHMAN ⭐️⭐️
The Irishman is about the relationship among three main characters: Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) and Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci). Hoffa was head of the Teamsters Union in the 1950s and early 60s, but it's his connection to the Kennedys that is at the core of this movie.
In 1961, with the help of his father's mob connections, John Kennedy was elected President. He appointed his brother, Robert, as Attorney General. Robert Kennedy made the arrest and conviction of Hoffa a top priority. Hoffa was jailed for trying to bribe a juror and fraud, then pardoned by Richard Nixon in 1971 (he gave Nixon a large contribution). By that time, he had lost control of the Teamsters and was banned from holding office in a union, but he refused to retire and was fighting to get back 'his union' when he disappeared on July 30, 1975, never to be heard from again.
The Irishman is Martin Scorsese's fourth movie about the mob or gangsters (I don't count The Gangs of New York as a mob movie) among over fifty non-gangster movies, but this is what he is known for. It runs for three and a half hours - or I should say, strolls, leisurely cutting back and forth in time from the early 1950s to the turn of the century. Veteren screenwriter Steven Zaillian wrote the script from Charles Brandt's book, "I Heard You Paint Houses, " the title of the book being mob-talk for a hit man.
Martin Scorsese loves voice over narration and most of his mob movies have voice-over narration as does this one by Sheeran. He starts out as a truck driver who helps things fall off the back of the truck - in his case, sides of beef - and ends up a mob hitman. Along the way, he marries, divorces and has four daughters, one of whom refuses to have anything to do with him when she gets old enough to understand what he was - a murderer.
The Irishman is not primarily the story of Jimmy Hoffa which has been told in a major film before, Danny DeVito's Hoffa (1992) from a script by David Mamet and starring Jack Nicholson in the title role. Hoffa was neither a critical nor commercial success.
In The Irishman, Scorsese has bigger fish to fry than the story of Hoffa - he wants to connect the election of John F. Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CIA's undercover operations to kill Castro, the assassination of Kennedy and the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.
He doesn't quite make it, but that doesn't stop him from trying very hard - like the fact that Sheeran in 1961 is ordered by Bufalino to take a truck to Miami that is loaded with military weapons and deliver it to 'a guy with big ears.' When Sheeran gets there and talks to the 'guy with big ears' we see that the guy doesn't have big ears because, as the big-eared guy explains, he had an operation to fix them. The weapons are loaded into a van with Spanish writing on its side - apparently these are weapons that were used in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. All of this is done so that thirteen years later, when Sheeran is watching the Watergate hearings on TV and sees 'big ears' testifying, it can be revealed that he is Howard Hunt, a Watergate conspirator. So instead of just telling Sheeran to deliver the weapons to Howard Hunt we have a lot of time wasted on hiding who that person is just so we can be 'surprised' that it is Howard Hunt of Watergate fame.
There are very long scenes about ...nothing much. For example, the core of the movie is a long car trip that Sheeran takes with Bufalino and their wives. There is a lot of talk about taking 'cigarette breaks' and the fact that Bufalino makes many stops along the way to collect money from various people. All of this has nothing to do with anything.
Scorsese's use of the same actors playing their characters' decades-long relationships is made possible by using CGI to change the actors aging face. I don't know if it was a conscious decision, but all the actors look like they are wearing masks. And the fact that peoples' faces change, not just wrinkles, over time is a real hindrance to this technique. I was never distracted by it but I did wonder, at times, where we were in the story - is this older Sheeran or younger?
DeNiro and Pesci have the same great chemistry that has made them a delight to watch since Raging Bull. Pacino enters the movie about a third of the way through and gives it a boost. Ray Romano gives a solid performance as Bufalino's lawyer brother and Bobby Cannavale does his crazy mobster bit as Skinny Razor. But the best performance in the movie belongs to Stephen Graham (Capone in Boardwalk Empire) as Anthony 'Tony Pro' Provenzano, a rival of Hoffa's.
Is it worth watching? Of course - but don't get your hopes up. This isn't the crowning gem of anybody's career. It a long, too long, poorly told story of some very bad people who did some very bad things - things that Scorsese seems reluctant to touch. For example, Hoffa helped destroy not only the reputation of the Teamsters Union, but unions in general. Movies about union bosses rarely show them for what the vast majority were and are - leaders working to make life better for the working people of America. Instead, Scorsese's union bosses are all corrupt - or fools.
A final note - a lot of the action takes place in South Philadelphia where I grew up. There is not even a slight attempt to make it realistic and there are no South Philly accents in the movie. But there is Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel). I never figured out why he was in the movie. Local color I guess.
A final final note - a lot of the mobsters on display are introduced by a blurb on screen telling us what happened to the mobster e.g. for Bruno: shot in the head sitting in a car outside his home. I am not sure why this was done. Crime doesn't pay? Not quite Michael Corleone sitting and staring out into space, wondering when and where and how it all went to hell.
THE LAUNDROMAT by Armen Pandola
Let's say you are in a position to make some money that is not quite legal - maybe you are a government official who can be 'reached' or a drug dealer or maybe you just made a lot of money legally and you don't want to give Uncle Sam or your taxman his incredibly huge share.
No matter how you made your money, one of the biggest problems you will have in avoiding the taxman is how to not pay taxes but still enjoy the fruits of your good fortune. Buying that yacht or Fifth Avenue penthouse condo is going to make the taxman wonder how you did that while making $6,500 a year.
Enter the law firm of Mossack Fonseca. For a relative pittance, they will handle all the legal niceties and 'wash' your money. Through corporate structures that are too complicated to explain without a degree in larceny, ah, I mean corporate law, all your ill-gotten gains or pre-tax millions will miraculously become profits made legally. In simpler times, your local godfather would have started an olive oil importing business.
A few years ago, an unknown person sent to the media a treasure trove of documents from the Mossack Fonseca firm. They revealed that a lot of very important people, Prime Ministers and Presidents, were clients who had engaged in these 'tax avoidance' schemes. It was all perfectly legal, like being a billionaire property developer who pays no taxes.
Enter Steven Soderbergh and Scott Z. Burns who directed and wrote The Laundromat, a new Netflix movie based on this tale of how the rich get and stay rich - because make no mistake about it, if you didn't have to pay taxes, the average income owner in the US would retire a millionaire if she prudently invested her tax-free savings. As Harry Lime in The Third Man says, "Tax-free, it's the only way to save money nowadays."
Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas play Mossack and Fonseca with pitch-perfect performances. The chameleon Meryl Streep does her usual magic and brings to life a victim of this new world shell game. There are many other characters as the story flows freely from continent to continent showing how it is done and how the law and the politicians who make the law are co-conspirators.
Don't let any of this put you off - it is a funny, engaging movie that does have a polemical tinge to it, but then it is difficult to speak of these crimes without just a little outrage since, if you haven't figured it out yet, the taxes these modern reverse Robin Hoods are avoiding is your money.
Sadly, the beat goes on. The money that drowns our political system in legal bribery will pay to keep the politicians right where they belong - in a pocket and it ain't yours. The scandals, like this one, will headline the news for a cycle or two and then get made into movies that nobody wants to watch as the victims of this system head to the nearest multiplex to watch Joker, fed on a steady diet of popcorn and marvel-ous circuses.
JOKER ⭐️
Parisians love movies. As I walk around the city, I see hundreds of movie theatres with all kinds of movies playing. Today, I decided to look at a big, multiplex movie theatre that is right around the corner from where I am staying, UGC CINÉ CITÉ LES HALLES - would you believe it is showing 46 films on 27 separate screens?
When you go to a French movie and you speak as little Frecnh as I do, you'll need to go see an American or English movie that is NOT dubbed but rather sub-titled. France has acronyms that describe what you will see -
VO stands for Version Originale, or the original version of the film with French subtitles for audiences that do not understand the native language of the film.
VF stands for Version Française, meaning that it is the French version of the film which has been dubbed with French audio - no subtitles.
VOSTFR stands for Version Originale Sous-Titrée en FRançais, meaning that it is the original version of a film with subtitles in French.
Finally, the term VOST stands for Version Originale Sous-Titrée, or the original version of a film with subtitles in the film's original language.
Most American films are dubbed in France and it is strange to hear the voices since they are nothing like the actor's real voice.
I saw Joker at a packed house. The audience was much more quiet than an American one. But, first, let me answer the question I know you are asking yourself - and the answer is Yes, they sell popcorn and it's good, but you'll have to first answer the BIG question when you order - sweet or sour? Sweet? Sour? I answered - sel, seulemont (salt only). The young woman was incredulous, but gave me my popcorn.
The most important thing about the movie you should know is that Joker is not about the Joker you and I and the rest of the world associate with Batman. This Joker is the Joker who became that Joker. Yes, eventually, he commits crimes but they are the ordinary crimes that most non-supervillains commit.
This Joker, played with wild abandon by Joaquin Phoenix, is a mommy's boy who has delusions of being normal. He lives in a city that resembles New York City in the 1970s. If you weren't there, it was a garbage-strewn, graffiti-emblazoned mess. Arthur Fleck, Joker's real name, is a clown who plays at childrens' parties. One day, he loses his job (the reason is silly) and discovers that his much-adored mother (Frances Conroy) may be as crazy and delusional as he is. Along the way, the film takes potshots at cutting the funding for mentally ill people - anyway, it's a really bad day and Arthur snaps.
One of his heroes is a Tonight-like show's host, Murray Franklin, played unconvincingly by Robert DeNiro. I think that is the first time I used that word to describe a DeNiro performance, but his totally stiff appearance makes his being cast as a Johnny Carson-ish character one of the greatest miscastings in the history of the movies. I mean, DeNiro would be better cast as Robin Hood or Cary Grant. Add the miscasting to the fact that the character is totally unappealing and you have hit the movie disaster jackpot.
Arthur longs to be a stand-up comic and make people laugh. His mother, may or may not have had Arthur during an affair with Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) - and there's your Batman connection.
Joker is one of the most evil films I have ever seen. I know that seems a strange word to use, but this movie cynically uses the depressingly wide gap between the haves and have-nots in America to act as a backdrop to a story that has no purpose other than to make us wince and squirm. Director/co-writer Todd Philips' most famous contribution to cinema has been the Hangover series. His writing partner, Scott Silver's last movie, The Finest Hours, lost $50,000,000.00 in the US. Hollywood studio heads, if you don't understand the anger of female writers and directors in Hollywood, take another look at Scott Silver. Yes, he was nominated for an Oscar for The Fighter, but there were three other writers on that script. Seventeen years ago, he wrote a hit movie, 8 Mile. Since then he has done nothing of note, yet here he is co-writing a big-budget movie and making a mess of it.
I emphasis the creators because this is one of the most poorly written scripts I have even seen made into a big-budget movie and I have seen some doozies. This is a movie that made me run home to shower. It is such an ugly look at the world that there is nothing at all that is redeeming about it. The most shocking moment is when we see Mr. Phoenix in his underwear - he looks seriously ill, almost malnourished. And his excesses don't stop there - his is one of the most undisciplined performances I have ever seen.
I have to mention the score because it is as bad as the rest of the movie. Written by Hildur Gudnadottir, it stops and starts and then disappears then BANG! BOP! Then it's just gone. Two words came to mind when it was over - thank god.
Joker is a world-wide hit. Some would argue that is the proverbial bottom line - who cares that it's not only junk, but evil junk, lots of people have gone to see it. Lots of people, in the past, have gone to hangings, beheadings, bear baitings and public burnings too. I am certain most people went to see Joker thinking they were going to see the Batman franchise Joker who had been played thrillingly by Jared Leto, Heath Ledger, Caesar Romero and Jack Nicholson. Well, the joke is on them. Us. Me. You.
BRANDO
Every once in a great while, someone comes along and changes everything.
In 1933, Fred Astaire made his leading role debut in The Gay Divorce and dance on film changed. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock made Psycho on a shoestring budget and killed the only real star in the movie in the first half- hour and movies changed.
In the early 20th century, Picasso and others started to paint not what they saw but what they felt and art changed.
And in the early 1950s, Marlon Brando started to act on film and film acting was never the same. Brando was able to bring an immediacy, an intimacy to his acting that no one before was able to do. In a series of movies, he re-defined what movie acting was all about.
This Saturday, TCM is going to show Brando movies all day long. If you have not seen one or more of these movies, or even if you have seen them, take another look. Watch how Brando approaches each character and transforms himself into him. Some of these movies are far from great or even good, but all of them have at their heart an actor who is committed to the truth, to breathing life into a series of words, an idea, a role - into being human.
In order of appearance, here they are:
JULIUS CAESAR - Shakespeare. Yeah, I know, but take a look. Brando plays Marc Antony. All of us remember his famous speech at Caesar's funeral - Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! You have never seen it done like this before. No less a Shakespearean actor than John Guilgud (he plays Cassius who has "a lean and hungry look") said that Brando could easily become a great Shakespearean actor - if he wanted. Of course, he didn't want that.
REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE - Playing opposite Elizabeth Taylor, directed by John Huston and based on the novel by Carson McCullers, this movie never quite gets going. Brando plays an in-the-closet army officer married to Taylor. The movie is about human sexuality and rather daring for the time in which it was made.
THE FUGITIVE KIND - Brando in another Tennesse Williams' play - but it has been much altered for the screen and given a different title. The cast is superb but the movie never catches up to what Williams had in mind - bringing Orpheus, the Greek god of music, art and sensuality, into modern America.
MORITURI - The title is Latin, referencing the phrase, "We who are about to die salute you!", said by gladiators to the Emperor before beginning combat. And that dull explanation is the perfect way to introduce this less than thrilling thriller. Brando speaks with the German accent he used in The Young Lions - you know that Brando must have understood that Germans did not speak German with an accent; yet, here he is speaking with a German accent.
MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY - The story of an 18th century British ship sailing for Tahiti with the hope of finding a new food source, breadfruit. The ship's first mate, played by Brando, mutinies. This is a long but not unexciting movie that lost a lot of money because it cost a small fortune to make. Brando's performance is very good, but the movie is really three movies since the leading actors - Brando, Trevor Howard (playing Captain Bly) and shipmate Richard Harris all seem to be acting in different movies.
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE - From the classic Tenessee Williams' play. Brando doesn't play Stanley Kowalski, he is Stanley Kowolski. With Vivian Leigh in her best performance and Karl Malden and Kim Hunter, Brando sets the screen on fire.
ON THE WATERFRONT - If you only watch one movie from this list, this is the one to watch. Brando plays the brother of a corrupt official of a longshoreman's union. Every performance in this movie is a best of career performance, and every behind the camera work is also a best, from Elia Kazan's directing, Budd Schulberg's script, Boris Kaufman's photography to Leonard Bernstein's score. Watch this movie - you will never see a better one.
THE WILD ONE - Brando heads up a motorcycle gang that takes over a small West coast town. It's not really that good, but it is iconic. Brando was at the height of his fame and yet he chose to make this odd movie about 'delinquents.'
GUYS AND DOLLS - A musical! One of the best musicals ever - the score is by Frank Loesser based on the stories of Damyon Runyon. Brando plays the lead, Sky Masterson, while Frank Sinatra must make do with the supporting role of Nathan Detroit. Brando cannot actually sing, but he is able to get the songs across because of his ability to act. Take a look at him and co-star Jean Simmons in their many scenes together and you will see how chemistry between two lovers is projected in movies.
A DRY WHITE SEASON - Two of my favorite actors, Donald Sutherland and Janet Suzman, head an excellent cast in this movie about apartheid in South Africa. Brando has a small role but he makes a big impression.
THE FRESHMAN - Brando parodies his role of the Godfather. Andrew Bergman writes and directs this very pleasing movie about not much.
IRINA ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Every once in awhile, you see a movie that gives you hope, again. Hope that movies can be more than spectacles, can be about real people with real problems in real places. It's a hope that started a long time ago when you first saw The Grapes of Wrath, then continued with Bicycle Thieves, Shoeshine, Miracle in Milan, Bitter Rice, Two Women (yes, Italian filmmakers created a mother lode of realistic films) Norma Rae - you get the idea. Movies that move us and tell a story about us.
Now, you can add Irina to that list. A Bulgarian movie made by first-time feature director Nadejda Koseva, written by Ms. Koseva, Svetoslav Ovtcharov and Bojan Vuletic, Irina tells the story of a young mother, Irina ( Martina Apostolova), with her baby boy living in a cramped house in a poor village, struggling to keep her family going. Her husband, Sasha ( Hristo Ushev), is unemployed as is Irina's sister, Ludmilla ( Kasiel Noah Asher) who lives with them.
One day, the roof falls in - she gets fired from her job and when she gets home early discovers her husband having sex with her sister. That same night, her husband has a terrible accident in which he loses both of his legs. We are in a world where things like this happen. It's the real world inhabited not by good guys and bad guys but by people who are sometimes good and sometimes bad.
Director Koseva, in a conversation after the showing of Irina, said that the inspiration for making this movie was her experience having a child several years ago when she realized that, contrary to accepted belief, women were not only men's equal in strength, they far exceeded men. Irina proves her resiliency when, desperately seeking a way to make money, she turns to being a surrogate mother for a wealthy couple ( Irini Jambonas and Alexander Kossev) who have their own brand of problems.
There are no chases, no one has super powers to surmount their everyday problems of finding money to eat, coal to keep warm and a place to call home. The best these characters can hope for is a chance to be forgiven and to forgive.
Irina, its creators and cast have won awards in film festivals all over the world and now have won both the audience favorite award and the judges award as Best Film at SEEfest 2019.
This is not some obscure vision of life in the 21st Century, but a timeless tale of one woman's quest for a better world for her family and herself. In that quest, in her journey, all of us can see our own.
Directors, Mona Nicoară and Dana Bunescu, in The Distance Between Me and Me have given us a vivid portrait of the poet, musician, intellectual, and committed communist Nina Cassian who lived in Romania from her birth in 1924 until she was forced into exile in 1985. More than that, their film shows us the conflicts between an artist, seeking to expose the world around her, and the government of her country, seeking to cover up that same world.
Romania after World War II became a dictatorship under the influence of the USSR. The film shows Cassian being interviewed during this period and also appearing in a state-sponsored film where she appears at a gathering of factory workers and discusses her poetry. The 'workers' express dissatisfaction with her poetry and all modern poetry as being too difficult to understand, even to college educated workers.
Cassian tells us, in the lengthy interview done with her by the filmmakers in the United States toward the end of Cassian's life. She reveals that 'metaphors' were banned in Romania for many years. She explains that she was forced to turn to writing music since, she explains, the censors did not know what to make of a major C or minor C - did major C mean freedom or was did it mean that there was a longing to be free?
The film examines the files of the State Security apparatus that kept her under surveillance for years. Many people urged her to flee, but she refused since Romania was her country and she loved it, just as she loved Communism which she believes never existed in Romania or the USSR.
The Distance Between Me and Me is more relevant today than ever. It shows us what can happen to a country that has embraced 'alternative facts' and how art can save what is left of the truth in such a country.
TRIAL BY FIRE ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
IT HAS A MESSAGE, BUT DON’T LET THAT STOP YOU
In the movie business, famous quotes are a dime a dozen, or as Yogi might have said but never did, "I never said half the things I said." So a line attributed to Samuel (If it's not broke, fix it) Goldwyn sums up Hollywood's view of polemical movies - "If you want to send a message, call Western Union." And the quote itself shows you how long it's been a movie mantra.
Of course, Hollywood always made movies with messages, it's just that the messages were usually the ones that corporate America wanted you to get. The first big box office hit was D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, a dazzling tour de force that created much of the language of film, but as racist and dispicable a piece of propaganda as was ever given a mass audience. Gone With The Wind was not much better even though Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American Oscar winner.
The problem was not with movies that had messages because most good movies did have a 'message' or strong point of view. The problem was with the message. Simply put, messages that promoted mainstream America's prejudices or were 'patriotic' were OK; messages that promoted change or showed sympathy for the downtrodden were not OK.
As a result, Hollywood rarely took on the fat cats for the simple reason that it was the fat cats who were running the movie studios that were making almost all of the movies. Of course, times have changed, but not much. While the common wisdom is that Hollywood is to the left of Karl Marx, the truth is that Hollywood rarely makes a movie with a populist political message.
Trial By Fire attempts to be an exception. It tells the story of Cameron Todd Willingham (Jack O'Connell), a 'white trash' Texan and his wife, Stacy (Emily Meade). Todd is convicted of murder for torching his own house while his three young children were sleeping. Directed by Edward Zwick, the movie starts with the deadly fire and the rage that is in Todd seems to be mirrored in the fire that consumes his family.
Todd is arrested when the police conclude that the fire was arson. Todd's trial has all the earmarks of a travesty of justice - his attorney can barely stay awake during the trial and puts up no defense. While Stacy, who was not home when the fire started, is convinced of Todd's innocence, she stands alone on his side during the trail, but after Todd is convicted, she abandons him, too.
The scenes of Todd in a Texas prison are pretty much standard movie issue: brutal guards who are only nominally less violent than Todd's fellow inmates. "Baby killer" is all anyone sees when they look at Todd and his violent behavior seems to justify everyone's prejudices about him.
Then, halfway through the movie, we jump ahead several years to when Elizabeth Gilbert (,Laura Dern), an upper middle class Texas writer, gets involved in Todd's case. While I just saw the movie, I cannot explain to you how that happens - it just does. Elizabeth has her own problems. She is trying to raise two teenage children while their father/her ex-husband is dying of cancer.
Zwick and screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher run into problems trying to tell both Elizabeth's story and Todd's. There is not enough time in this 127 minute movie to do both. When Elizabeth's husband dies, we have to make do with a minute or so of her and the children grieving in bed together. In a later scene, her children accuse her of caring more about Todd than her own children, but that 30 second scene is all we get of that issue.
In an interview following the movie, Zwick said that he wanted to make a movie that was all of one piece instead of a 5 or 6 episode TV movie. Sadly, he didn't streamline the story to fit into the limited movie format. Todd is the story and what happens to him and how he changes is the core of the movie. To fit in Elizabeth, Zwick is forced to jump from out-of-control Todd to Todd as Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) in The Shawshank Redemption without the time necessary to show the transition.
Having said all that, this is a movie worth seeing. The acting is first class. Jack O'Connell and Emily Meade are incredible as the arguing, fist-fighting, loving couple from the wrong side of the tracks. Dern, as usual, is simply outstanding. And while I think that Zwick took a wrong turn or two, he has made an emotionally gripping movie. While ostensibly this movie's message is that capital punishment is wrong, the real message is that this world is unfair and you had better get used to it or do something about it. Zwick is on the side of those who want to do something about it.
Director Edward Zwick
Writer Geoffrey Fletcher
Stars Laura Dern, Jack O'Connell, Emily Meade, Jade Pettyjohn, Jeff Perry
Rating R (Violence and very brief nudity)
Running Time 2h 7m
Genres Biography, Drama
THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
THE TRUE COLOR OF WAR
Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old is a documentary using 100 year old film clips of World War I (1914-1918) taken from the archives of the Imperial War Museum. Also, it uses the voices of the British soldiers who fought in WWI to narrate the film. These voices were recorded in hundreds of interviews with the soldiers done twenty or more years after the war.
Jackson had the raw footage 'remastered' so that it is now as detailed as a modern film - the faces and reactions of individual soldiers are crystal clear and allow us to look at them not as distant, barely discernible humans but as full-fledged members of our shared humanity.
Jackson is not interested in the history of WWI, its origins and causes. There is no preamble giving the movie context. Instead, Jackson takes the viewpoint of a British male citizen between the ages of 18 and 35 who volunteered and was sent to the front lines, As one soldier says, "We didn't bother with what was happening to our left or right or even back home - all we concentrated on was what was right in front of us." This is the virtue of Jackson's movie and, also, its failing: without giving the war a context, much of the global tragedy and incomprehensible cruelty of WWI is lost.
WWI was THE critical event of the 20th century; without it, the rest of the 20th century and the current posture of the world is unimaginable. It was as a result of WWI that the United States became a dominant world power and it was the beginning of the end of the United Kingdom's empire on which the sun never set. The Russian Revolution transformed that vast country from an absolute dictatorship of the Romanov family to a dictatorship of the proletariat. WWI destroyed other monarchies,too, in Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and established the modern nation-state throughout Europe.
The cost of the war was staggering: forty million casualties with most major belligerents having more than a million each (the USA had over 100,000 dead and while its entrance into the war on the side of the Allies proved decisive, it was never a major player during most of the war). These casualties were the 'best and the brightest' their country had to offer. It is no wonder that Europe found itself fighting another devastating war in less than a generation - most of its future leaders were killed in WWI.
Jackson doesn't care about all that. Instead, he concentrates on the experiences of the common soldier. The film can be broken down into three parts: the soldier's enlistment and training, his time in the trenches and at the battle front and, finally, his return to civilian life. Wisely, Jackson colorizes only the dominant middle section so that when we leave the homefront for the battlefront, we experience a transformation similar to Dorothy's entrance into the land of OZ - we are no longer in Kansas.
Trench warfare dominated WWI. Both sides built and fought out of trenches. One of the earliest trench battles happened during the US Civil War in the siege of Richmond at the end of the war. Little changed in how trench warfare was fought in the half-century between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of WWI except for the vastly increased fire power of machine guns and artillery.
How anyone survived in the trenches is a miracle. There was no sanitation. Soldiers had one uniform that they wore for years. There were no field hospitals, no portable toilets (a piece of wood studding was placed over an open ditch for defecating and there was no toilet paper so soldiers used their hands), no clean water and drinking water was distributed in petrol cans that retained the smell and taste of gasoline. The food was horrible and the only ones getting fat were the rats that were everywhere, feeding off the copious number of dead soldiers rotting in the mud. When both armies started using poisonous gas the terrors of the front became apocalyptic (Hitler who served in the German army during WWI was blinded by an Allied gas attack near the end of the war and spent months in the hospital recovering).
The images are so clear that the soldiers' bad teeth (soldiers were issued one toothbrush and most used it to clean the buttons on the uniforms), dirty clothes and, horribly, wounds come alive. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers' corpses were unidentifiable because they had been so badly mauled by machine gun fire or blasted to bits by artillery fire.
Jackson's film provides an explanation for the similar conduct of many soldiers I knew who fought in the front lines of many wars: his film shows us why so many ex-soldiers don't want to talk about their time in the military. My father was in WWII and won two bronze stars as part of the engineer corps, but he never wanted to talk about his experience. Whenever I asked him, all he would say is, "It's not something I want to remember." One of my best friends fought in Vietnam and was wounded. Not once, in the many days and nights I spent in his company did he ever relate one incident or talk about one moment of his time in Vietnam. Jackson's movie speaks for them. As Civil War General Sherman said, "War is hell." They Shall Not Grow Old shows us, in vivid color, why that is true.
DO YOU CARE?
This Sunday, at the Dolby Theater at the Hollywood & Highland Center, the 91st Academy Awards will be presented.
The Oscars were created by the moguls of the movie industry in Hollywood to promote their product. They do that by giving a trophy to people who, in the judgement of the members of the movie industry, have made great movies during the past year.
So, how well have the members of the movie industry been in selecting great movies?
One thing is clear from the start - the popularity of a movie may influence the voters in selecting movies that win an Oscar, but rarely have the Academy members agreed with the public's choice, that is, rarely is the most popular movie selected as the best movie of the year.
Few movies are so obviously great from their release that they are declared a masterpiece, instantly. Usually, it takes many years before a consensus grows.
So, let's go way back to 1952. At the 25th Academy Awards, the voters declared that The Greatest Show on Earth was the best movie of the year. Never saw it or even heard of it? The Greatest Show was a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza about a circus. OK, you say, maybe it was a weak year. Here's a list of some of the better movies made that year:
SINGIN IN THE RAIN
THE QUIET MAN
HIGH NOON
VIVA ZAPATA
MOULIN ROUGE
5 FINGERS
THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
PAT AND MIKE
LIMELIGHT
UMBERTO D
FORBIDDEN GAMES
THEY CLASH BY NIGHT
OK, was 1952 an aberration? Not really. Here's a small list of movies that were never even nominated for any Oscar:
DUCK SOUP
BRINGING UP BABY
HIS GIRL FRIDAY
KING KONG (1933)
MODERN TIMES
PATHS OF GLORY
GROUNDHOG DAY
THE SHINING
MEAN STREETS
And it's not just movies - many great actors and actresses have never won and some, like E.G. Robinson, were never even nominated for a competitive Oscar.
Most movies in the AFI 100 Greatest Movies never won Best Picture, including its top spot, Citizen Kane. In other lists, Vertigo is listed at the top, but it was not even nominated for Best Picture (Gigi was the big winner that year, while Vertigo won no Oscars and was nominated for only two - Art Direction and Sound).
So, does anyone other than the actual winner, his or her obituary writer (yes, win an Oscar and it will be the lead in your obit) and those with a financial stake in a movie, care who wins?
Fewer and fewer movie goers care. The number who watch the show gets smaller every year. In 2018, it hit an all-time low - thus, all the suggested changes in the Oscar telecast, from handing out an Oscar for popularity to cutting certain category winners from the telecast. The Academy is desperate to keep the telecast under 4 hours.
So, are you going to watch?
Many watch the show because it is live and every decade or so, something strange or wonderful actually happens. In 1969, Ruth Gordon, 72 years old, won her first Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Rosemary’s Baby and told the audience, “I can’t tell you how encouraging a thing like this is.” In 1974, a man streaked naked across the stage, allowing host David Niven to ad-lib one of the most quoted lines in Oscar history: “Probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings.” In 1999, Roberto Benigni won for Best Actor and he was so thrilled that he climbed over seats on his way to the podium. In 2017, the presenters read out the wrong winner for Best Picture.
Of course, if something weird or wonderful does happen, you can watch it somewhere online the next morning and, also, find a list of the winners (did you win the pool?) so you don't have to endure the hours of heartfelt thanks from people you never heard of and the never-ending banter between the presenters that some writer (probably very late in the day) thought was funny.
This year, there is no host. The last time that happened was 1989 when the show opened with Snow White serenading the stars. Watch and catch the look on the faces of Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman and others as Snow White serenades them. It was an acting lesson on how to project embarrassment.
So, pop some corn, pour some wine, take some no doze and settle in for a night of - who knows what?
A TRIO OF FORGOTTEN GEMS
Before the 20th century, entertainment was a one-off experience. Sure, plays could be seen again and again, but the very nature of the theatre experience is that a play is born anew with each performance - as are all live entertainments from classical orchestra concerts to stand-up comedians.
But movies, they are here forever - or at least since we have been digitizing them. You can see one of the earliest known movies, The Great Train Robbery, and most of the movies made since then. So, if you missed a movie when it was first released, you can be sure to find it somewhere, especially in our new age of streaming TV.
So this holiday weekend, I watched three movies made in the last five years that were released, then quickly forgotten. None of them were even minor hits, although they all received good reviews.
In 2014, ROB THE MOB, based on a true story, was released. It had a difficult history and went through many changes before being filmed, but, in the end, the makers of it got it right. A young couple, Tommy (Michael Pitt) and Rosa (Nina Arianda), are trying to overcome addictions and prison terms to make a life for themselves in New York City. While they both get jobs as telephone dunners, Tommy dreams of striking it rich and hits on the idea of robbing mob 'social clubs' on the theory that criminals are unlikely to call the cops. Of course, it's not really that great of an idea for reasons that are obvious to sane people, but Tommy is bent on revenge for the mob's killing of his father who was in hock to the mob. With that said, it's a funny thriller made all the better by fine performances from Ray Romano as a crime reporter, Andy Garcia as a mafia-family head and Griffin Dunne as the best boss in the world.
FINDING YOUR FEET takes us to a different world as Sandra (Imelda Staunton), an upper-middle class English housewife, finds her dreams of an idyllic retirement with her husband of over thirty years shattered when she discovers hubby has been carrying on an affair with her best friend for years. On an angry impulse she storms out of their beautiful home and has no place to go but to live with her bohemian sister, Bif (Celia Imrie) with whom she has not been in touch for over a decade. The movie's humor comes from her trying to adapt to this new life, in part by re-discovering her pre-married self's love of dance - thus the title. Slowly she melts and it turns out she has a better time blending in than she did standing out. Many of life's aging surprises (yes, Bette, it is not for sissies) are touched upon, the most memorable being Bif's friend, Charlie (Timothy Spall), who has to sell his house to provide his alzheimer-afflicted wife with full-time care in a lovely British countryside assisted-living 'home.' The acting is typically British first-class (Joanna Lumley of Absolutely Fabulous brightens every scene she is in) and the plot even takes us to Rome! This delightful comedy is just what your digestion needs this food-filled holiday weekend.
A LITTLE CHAOS takes us to another country, France, and to another time, the 17th century. King Louis XIV (excellently portrayed by Alan Rickman who also directed and co-wrote), decides to build Versailles and entrusts the designing of its extensive gardens to his chief gardner, Andre Le Notre (Matthias Schoenaerts). In turn Le Notre hires Sabine De Barra (Kate Winslet) to construct a 'rock garden' for the site (the title refers to the fact that classic French gardens are well-ordered but Madame De Barre introduces a little chaos) . While this is an English movie, it does take place in France so we know that a large part of the plot has to do with romances of various kinds and, again because it is France, deceptions. The acting is top notch (Stanley Tucci pops up and steals every scene he is in and the excellent Helen McCrory shows why we'd love to see more of her) the screenplay is excellent and the cinematography is to die for. Did we mention that Kate Winslet gives another superb nuanced performance? If for nothing else, watch it for that.
And now the best news - all three are on Amazon Prime, so there is not need to switch channels in midstream (sorry, couldn't resist).
DUMBO ⭐️⭐️
THEN AND NOW by Armen Pandola
One of the joys of grandparenting is that you get to see all the kid flicks which, today, are some of the best movies being made - or remade.
Disney released the animated Dumbo in 1941. It was a short 64 minutes long and Disney made it far less lavish than its 1940 release, Fantasia. In spite of the turbulent times (released just 6 weeks before Pearl Harbor) Dumbo went on to be Disney's most profitable film of the 1940s.
The plot is pretty simple with the kick being that Dumbo, a baby elephant with huge ears, is separated from his mother, Jumbo, and comes to befriend a very smart mouse. Eventually, Dumbo is able to fly and, of course, becomes a sensation and is reunited with his mother. The original Dumbo is a delightful movie that has just enough magic in it to re-awaken the child in all of us. Essentially, it is about friendship, self-confidence and the joy of being who you are.
And that brings us to the new Dumbo, directed by Tim Burton, written by Ehren Kruger with an all-star cast including Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Eva Green and Alan Arkin. Somehow, the new Dumbo tries to bring in all the elements of the original Dumbo but in a live action movie instead of an animated one. At first you might think that is impossible, but the magic of CGI should never be underestimated. Dumbo stumbles and falls and screams and flys!
It is a beautiful movie, as many Tim Burton films are - but there the comparisons with the original end.
This Dumbo is much darker - did we mention that Tim Burton directed it? Having Colin Farrell as the lead puts a shadow over the whole enterprise (even when he laughs he seems sinister) and then add the fact that hIS character lost his right arm in the war and this Dumbo is markedly different looking than the watercolored Disney original.
And there are new plot twists, like an evil Keaton who cons a gullible DeVito (I think that is a first for a DeVito character) into a partnership so Keaton can get his hands on the flying elephant for his big, brash amusement park on Coney Island. Did you ever think you would see a Disney movie that decries big, brash amusement parks?
Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito are excellent as usual while Alan Arkin is totally wasted in a throw-away roll as a soulless banker. Eva Green (Casino Royale, Penny Dreadful) plays 'the woman' in the movie so while she starts out on the side of darkness, she must change in order to provide some romance for Farrell who has two kids who lost their mother .... really, this is supposed to be a kids flick starring a one-armed malcontent somewhat violent widower.
And for all of that, it's not as bad as the critics have made it out to be. Hey, it's tough to totally screw up a movie about a flying elephant.
Directed by Tim Burton
Screenplay by Ehren Kruger
Starring Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Eva Green, Alan Arkin
Music by Danny Elfman
Cinematography Ben Davis
Edited by Chris Lebenzon
Distributed by Walt Disney Studios
Running time 112 minutes
Playing at many local theaters
10 BEST PRIVATE EYE MOVIES
Here, in the order that they came to mind, are ten movies you will love watching. What is a Private Detective movie? Simple, the movie must have a person who is doing private investigative work, that is, is not a police officer. The Private Eyes on the list are as different as shades of blood. The movies are mostly from the 1940s to through the 70s when this genre flourished, often as film noir too. What is film noir? Well, as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote about pornography - I know it when I see it. When will someone make a great contemporary PI movie to watch?
1. CHINATOWN
This is one of the best movies, period. The story of water in Los Angeles is an ongoing drama but Robert Towne made it into a timeless story of lust, greed and redemption. Great performances by Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and the under-appreciated John Huston make the characters all too human, while Roman Polanski adds a touch of evil. This is a movie about Hollywood with no mention of movies or stars, but almost an homage to the kinds of movies old Hollywood made famous.
2. THE MALTESE FALCON
John Huston adapted and directed this take on the famous Dashiell Hammett book, introducing the world-weary Sam Spade. Yes, spade as in digger. When his partner gets killed, he teams up with an improbable person with the even more improbable name of Brigid O'Shaughnessy (played impeccably by Mary Astor). The supporting cast is a who's who of misfits starting with Sydney Greenstreet who made his movie debut in this flick, Peter Lorre, Gladys George, Barton MacLane, Elisha Cook, Jr. and Ward Bond (not really a misfit here, but rather the 'good' cop, so a misfit in this movie).
3. THE BIG SLEEP
Raymond Chandler created private eye, Philip Marlowe, the gold standard for all future private eyes. Howard Hawks directed Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in what would prove their biggest hit together. The combined talents of William Faulkner,Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman provided the script - Faulkner was no novice at writing stories about crime as his early novel Sanctuary proved. Bogie is at his best here.
4. KLUTE
Jane Fonda plays a prostitute/actress in NYC. Donald Sutherland is a small town cop who comes to NYC in search of a missing person whose last known contact was with Fonda. The plot is kind of crazy but the ride is great with Fonda and Southerland burning up the screen with their chemistry. Alan J. Pakula directed from a screenplay by Andy and Dave Lewis.
5. GUMSHOE
Stephen Frears directed this 1971 sleeper starring Albert Finney, Billie Whitelaw and Frank Finlay from a screenplay by Neville Smith. Finney is a stand-up comic/MC at a bingo parlor trying to get back the girl he lost (Whitelaw) to his brother (Finlay). His real dream is to be a private eye like his hero Bogie. Along the way, he uncovers a sinister plot involving a fat man and murder. Take my word for it - this is a gem.
6. HARPER
Based on Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer, Paul Newman gives one of the best performances of his career as PI Lew Harper (Newman had a series of hits with one-word titled movies beginning with H so..). A gold digger wife (Lauren Bacall, excellent but also connecting us to the beginnings of this genre) is looking for her missing millionaire hubby. The cast is incredible: Arthur Hill, Julie Harris, Shelley Winters, Janet Leigh, Strother Martin, Robert Webber and giving his best performance on screen, Robert Wagner. William Goldman wrote the screenplay with Jack Smight directing. This is a classic, but don't let that stop you.
7. THE LONG GOODBYE
Another Raymond Chandler Philip Marlowe novel turned into movie gold but this time as seen through the lens darkly by Robert Altman with Leigh Brackett doing the adaptation. Elliot Gould plays Marlowe as a savvy but somewhat out of place PI in the world of 1970s LA anything goes culture. Nina van Pallandt provides the romance and Sterling Hayden provides the craziness as Marlowe looks for a friend who has disappeared with a bad guy's dough. The director Mark Rydell hopes in front of the camera and almost steals the movie. This is one to watch a little high to enrich the experience.
8. VERTIGO
Alfred Hitchcock's movie about lost love and redemption is not usually classified as a PI flick, but it is. Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) has retired from the police force due to an accident while chasing a suspect over San Francisco's rooftops; he discovers that he has acrophobia ( fear of heights). When an old college buddy asks him to follow his wife (Kim Novak) because he thinks she may be possessed, Scottie is reluctant but agrees. What follows is one of the best movies ever made. The haunting score by Bernard Herrmann and the excellent cast including Barbara Bel Geddes make this one to cherish.
9. THE SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION
Nicholas Meyer had the happy thought that when Sherlock Holmes was getting addicted to cocaine (it's in the original stories), the world's leading expert on cocaine was Sigmund Freud. So what if Holmes came under the care of Freud? The result is a fine book and an great movie with Alan Arkin as Freud, Nicol Williamson as Holmes and Robert Duvall as Watson. Add to this mix Vanessa Redgrave, Joel Grey and Laurence Olivier, and you have a remarkable movie about the world's most famous private detective. Herbert Ross directs.
10. THE THIRD MAN
Another movie usually not classified as a private eye flick, but when Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) arrives in Vienna to find his friend and benefactor, Harry Lime (Orson Welles) died in a car accident, he decides to look into it. Martins writes western pot boilers, but he takes on the job of PI to prove that Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) is wrong when he accuses Lime of being a drug dealer. Along the way, he meets and falls for Lime's girlfriend, Alida Valli. From the pen of Graham Greene, directed by Carol Reed, this movie will keep you on the edge of your seat until the end and the best chase scene not involving a car on film.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, AGAIN
The movie, To Kill A Mockingbird, is being re-released in movie theaters on March 24, 27, 2019. Originally, it was released on Christmas Day, 1962, based on the best-seller of 1960 written by Harper Lee.
Directed by Robert Mulligan and written by Horton Foote, the movie closely follows the book's plot - Scout, a six year old girl, and her ten year old old brother, Jem, live in a small southern town in the 1930s with their father, Atticus Finch, an attorney. Their mother died when Scout was only two and neither child has clear memories of her. During the summer, a young boy, Dill, joins Scout and Jem to explore the neighborhood, and, especially, the home of a mysterious character, Boo Radley, a young man kept in isolation by his father.
The opening title sequence, created by Stephen Frankfurt with music by Elmer Bernstein, is one of the best ever done in film, setting up the adult story told by children.
The book is narrated by Scout and the movie makes a virtue of this by having an adult woman, voiced by Kim Stanley, narrate throughout as the adult Scout. Stanley's voice and the beautiful music of Elmer Bernstein create an atmosphere that is difficult to resist. Much like the beginning of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the movie sets a tone that is intoxicating - it is a memory movie. It tells us of a time past, when things were different. Or so we imagine.
The story is about growing up, about evil that passes for tradition and good that wears rags and is scary. The children play dangerous games while the adults act out tragedies masquerading as justice. When a mad dog threatens the neighborhood, the sheriff comes to the rescue, but he's too unsure of his abilities and asks Atticus, the lawyer, to shoot the dog because, as he tells a wide-eyed Jem when his father kills the charging dog with one shot, 'didn't you know your daddy was the best shot in the county?' So later, when Atticus confronts true evil and it spits in his face, Jem knows that it isn't cowardice or lack of skill that keeps Atticus' hands at his side.
The African-Americans are not rounded characters in Lee's story because she isn't writing about them. The most detailed, Calpurnia, the Finch's housemaid and cook, has a quiet dignity. Her relationship with the children is as a substitute mother and a lot of Scout's courage and insights are Calpurnia's legacy to her.
The other African-American character is the victim, Tom Robinson, accused of raping a young white girl, Mayella Violet Ewell. Everyone knows that the trial is a mere formality. Lee does not flinch from the evil that is in her hometown; 'good men and true' are set on lynching Tom and even Atticus cannot stop them.
Currently, there is a play on Broadway adopted from Lee's novel by Aaron Sorkin, one of our times most accomplished writers for TV and theatre. There was - as the saying goes, literally - a lawsuit about the changes from the book that Sorkin wanted to make in his play. As with most lawsuits, the case was settled. Since I have not seen the play, I cannot comment on it.
I will say that the movie, too, changed several things from the book. At the time of the movie's release in 1962, the South was still, racially, much like it was in the 1930s. Blacks and whites could not eat, sleep, drink, sit or even go to the the bathroom in the same place; of course, they could not marry. For those who have seen Green Book, that was the South that existed in the early 1960s. So, the movie left out much of the book that showed the virulent racism of the townspeople in order to placate the South so that the movie could be released there. It did that to its detriment and our loss since many more have seen the movie than read the novel. Life is very complicated and people more so. Rarely are they just one thing or the other - good or evil. That is what Scout and Jem come to learn. And that is what great novels, movies and plays show us - a look in that spooky mirror called reality. As Tennessee Williams has Tom say: I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
It's been a long time since I saw the movie on the big screen. My clearest memory is of the final confrontation between Atticus' children and the evil father of Mayella, Bob Ewell, who was set on getting revenge on Atticus for defending Tom Robinson by hurting his children. I was about Jem's age so it makes sense that he was my focus. When Jem gets attacked by Ewell, he is saved, but not by Atticus, not by any of the townspeople we have met, but, rather, by the outcast, the boogie man of the town, Boo.
While 1960s South Philadelphia was far from 1930s Alabama, Jem's life and mine had much in common. In the summer, you left the house in the morning and didn't come back until you were hungry. You had adventures. And along the way, there were people who wanted to hurt you or your sister or friends and you had to fight for what was right. And not always with your fists. Sometimes, you had to fight with your heart. That was much more dangerous.
10 VALENTINE MOVIES TO WARM YOUR HEART
With Valentine's Day on a Thursday, we can safely say that it's a Valentine's Weekend. So, cuddle up with a loved one and watch a movie or two that will make you see the power of love - it can heal and it can kill. No matter what you do, no matter how silly or ridiculous you act or how desperate you are to attract, hold and keep your love, just remember what Billy Joel had to say about it - "I've been a fool for lesser things."
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT - Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are stuck on a cross-country bus ride. Her wealthy father is trying to track her down and his newspaper wants the exclusive story about the crazy heiress. First movie to win all 4 Big Oscars.
THE PHILADELPHIA STORY - Katharine Hepburn is going to marry a nouveau riche but never fear, ex-hubby blue-blood Cary Grant saves the day while Jimmy Stewart steals the picture as a reluctant reporter.
NINOTCHKA - Greta Garbo is a Soviet Commissar sent to Paris to recall three very naughty Russian agents when she meets Melvyn Douglas who shows her the real Paris.
THE AFRICAN QUEEN - Humphrey Bogart is skipper of a tug when his sole passenger, Katharine Hepburn, turns his oily heart to mush.
ENOUGH SAID - In his last flick, James Gandolfini meets Julia Louis-Dreyfus and while she doesn't hear the bells, eventually she sees the light.
ROMAN HOLIDAY - Reporter Gregory Peck, along with the rest of the world, falls in love with Audrey Hepburn.
VERTIGO - Detective James Stewart falls for the subject of his surveillance, Kim Novak, and the mystery begins. This is Hitchcock so you know it doesn't end with a weekend in Niagara Falls.,
THE APARTMENT - Schmuck Jack Lemmon has eyes for elevator-operator Shirley Maclaine. Eventually, he gets the key to her heart.
MOONSTRUCK - Falling in love can be dangerous - and if you don't know what I am talking about, that's all I'm saying. Snap out of it!
THE PRINCESS BRIDE - On the way to the fairy tale of love everlasting, you may meet a monster or two - don't panic. Love is many things - none of them logical.
BIRD BOX or how to make a hit horror movie.
Netflix's Bird Box, directed by Susanne Bier (The Night Manager TV series) and written by Eric Heisserer (Arrival) from a book by Josh Malerman, has created a sensation. While Netflix never releases audience numbers, Bird Box seems to be a hit. Of course, 'hit' must be in context. Hit shows on the major networks like The Big Bang Theory have upward of 18 million viewers. In-theatre only movies have more viewers - Black Panther sold over 70 million tickets.
The consensus is that Bird Box had 26 millions viewers (compare that to the Golden Globes with 18.6 million). Whatever the numbers, Bird Box is a hit, generating not only viewers but buzz: Is it a joke, this 'thing' or 'no-thing' that causes people to kill themselves? What makes this story go? Not the characters who have no or little backstory, or the simple plot: if you see 'it', you kill yourself.
Bird Box, for the 300 million or so who have not watched it, is about a woman, Sandra Bullock (I am not using character names because, as I said, the characters have no backstory and, in fact, the movie uses the 'public perception' of the actors to fill-in for character development, like casting John Wayne in a western - you know who this guy is based on who is playing the part), who is pregnant but without a husband or father of the child who left, apparently, soon after he did the deed. Her sister, Sarah Paulson, wants to help her since Bullock is not a happy mother-to-be and is even told by her doctor that most mothers end up loving their child. Bullock is so unconvinced that she doesn't want to know the gender of the baby and, in fact, she ends up calling it "Boy" (and a same-age girl she ends up taking care of, "Girl").
The movie is told in two simultaneous parts, five years apart. So, we see the world-wide epidemic of suicides and how it quickly infects the California community where Bullock and Paulson live. There is no explanation, suddenly, people start doing crazy things - banging their heads until they die, driving cars into other cars, stabbing themselves. These scenes of the 'beginning' of the epidemic are interspersed with scenes from five years later when survivors Bullock and her son and "Girl" are in her care as she tries to get them to safety. The key to survival is being blindfolded whenever outside and not looking at 'it.'
The buzz reminds me of the public's reception of Rosemary's Baby almost 50 years ago. That movie saw newly weds, Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, move into a Manhattan apartment. Cassavetes is an actor up for a big part. He gets it when the actor who was selected, suddenly, goes blind. Soon after, Farrow gets pregnant and is stuck at home getting unwanted advice and help from an elderly couple who live next door. It turns out that they are a witch/warlock pair and her husband sold Farrow to these demons so that her child could be the new Beelzebub. It's a thrilling and scary movie, a roller coaster ride through the terrors of pregnancy and a parent's worst fears realized - little Johnny turns out to be a devil, literally.
Just as in Bird Box, the characters in Rosemary's Baby were not fully drawn. The young couple seem to have landed in Manhattan from the moon, no family and very few friends. There are really only 4 characters in the movie - the young and elderly couples. The plot is not explained very much - yes, a few minutes are spent on talking about witches and warlocks, but nothing that makes any impression other than that they do exist.
And that is how to have a hit 'horror' movie. One exciting scene after another, keeping the audience occupied with visuals that are arresting and moments that are shocking. In Bird Box, John Malkovich plays his stereotypical angry, bitter, suspecting character. Trevante Rhodes plays the guy we met in Moonlight. There are other stereotypes you will recognize - happy, overweight pregnant woman who is actually a lot better person than we think, odd couple 20-somethings who end up in bed (well, doing it but not actually in ...), sympathetic looking guy who turns out to be a monster, unsympathetic guy who turns out to be right - you've met them all before but not in this movie.
Anyway, it's a fun 2 hours. It comes to a kind of conclusion, just like Rosemary's Baby. And at the end, Sandra Bullock gets to go on another scary, dangerous, thrilling ride - this time in a boat not a bus, but it's the same ride and the same plucky Sandra who survives.
VICE
Adam McKay's Vice is a 2 hour and 12 minute SNL sketch (McKay is an alum of that show) - with better make-up and actors.
The movie follows former Vice-President (under Bush II) Dick Chaney from his wildwood days in Wyoming (two DUIs) to the White House. The journey is long, with stints as Chief of Staff (Ford), Congressman and Secretary of Defense (Reagan). The overall theme is that but for his wife, Lynn, Chaney would have been a drunken cowboy with a serious heart problem.
The acting is superb. As Chaney, Christian Bale projects a man willing to do anything to get what he wants. Amy Adams as his wife, Lynn Chaney, keeps her husband's ambition on track as Lady Macbeth. Steve Carell as Dick Rumsfeld is as smarmy as the original. Sam Rockwell as Bush II brings the lights-on-but-nobody's-home quality to a President defined by his being the puppet for whatever special interests happen to see him last. Tyler Perry as Colin Powell is more a cameo than a role played by an actor whose name is above the title.
What Chaney wants is power. One of the flicks themes is how Chaney & Company pushed a theory called 'The Unified Executive', a nebulous phrase that really is just old The Imperial Presidency dressed up to sound legal. The argument is simple and best expressed by Richard Nixon who famously said, "If the President does it, then it's legal."
McKay tells the story of the rise of Chaney with the tools used mostly in TV comedy sketches. For example, when discussing the run-up to the Iraqi War, we see Chaney and his minions at dinner when the waiter (Alfred Molina, uncredited) goes through a menu listing all of the crazy constitutional theories they put out to justify their illegal acts. The scene ends with Chaney saying that they will have all of them - of course.
Vice tries to be a real biography when it shows Chaney supporting his gay daughter (Alison Pill in a role as small as her name) even though he and his supporters have been virulently anti-gay. I am not sure where this part of the story goes because when his other daughter , Liz (Lily Rabe) runs for Congress and says she is against gay marriage, we see his gay daughter call Chaney and cry that she has been betrayed. This incident shows us a lot that is wrong about Vice. Liz is a grown woman yet Vice wants you to believe that her father made this decision for her,
Vice is about an 45 minutes too long. All the stuff before the Bush II years is just a set up to show us how Chaney & Company took the US to war in Iran (the movie claims it was for PR reasons - huh?) and destroyed the US constitution's check and balances form of government. While the movie has some interesting quirks - the menu bit and others that are based on the techniques used in sketch comedy - it is far from a scathing portrait of how the US ended up where it is, scorned by most of the world and a plutocracy. There are some laughs and surprises, like any good comedy sketch, but nothing that is worth 2 hours and 12 minutes of our time.
BAD SEEDS (Mauvaises Herbes)
Once in a while a movie comes along that speaks to you.
Sometimes, it's a big, important movie like The Godfather or quiet important movie like Howard's End.
And sometimes, it is just the right movie at the right time. In 1978, my wife and I went to see a movie and it was sold out, so we looked at what other movies we could see and for unknown reasons we selected a French comedy because I recognized one of the actor's name - Ugo Tognazzi. The movie was La Cage aux Folles. If you have never seen the original French movie, give yourself a New Year's present, see it.
Forty years later, lightning struck again, but this time surfing the innumerable choices on TV with my sister, looking for anything that wasn't about sadistic murderers or alien invasions. And, viola! There was Mauvaises Herbes or Bad Seeds, another French movie, this time taking place in Paris instead of Nice and on Netflix instead of a movie theatre. What drew us in was its female lead, Catherine Deneuve, looking every bit as beautiful as she has always been, but a beauty tempered by time and experience.
The story was simple - she and a thirty-ish Arab refugee, Wael, (Kheiron who also wrote and directed) have a neat scam that trades on people's prejudices about elderly woman and immigrants. When they get caught, it's not by the cops, but by an old male acquaintance of Deneuve's who threatens to turn them into the police unless they help him. He runs a summer program for 'bad seeds', six problem teens who are close to dropping out of school.
Wael becomes their teacher and his first challenge is to get the kids to speak - they have banned together, promising not to say a word. Wael solves this problem ingeniously then goes on to teach the wayward teens lessons in life.
Interspersed with this story is the story of a small boy in an unstated Arab country that is being torn apart by violence. His family is murdered and he has to live on the streets. How he does that and how he gets brought to an orphanage run by nuns is the parallel story from the boy's point of view.
Add into the mix a corrupt cop, a story of autumnal love, a neat trick to getting an attractive girl's phone number, six troubled but fascinating teens and just the right amount of menace and mayhem - and Viola!
Just as forty years ago, I was left with a warm glow that made me think not all is Trumpian gloom, that there is a way to find a life both fulfilling and sustainable, that the good, by adapting itself to this crooked world, can prevail.
I know, it's just a movie.
QUEENS HIGH
I cannot think of any more popular subject for movies, TV shows, plays and books than the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I in England and Mary in Scotland. The time period is almost a century long, from Henry's ascension to the throne in 1509 to Elizabeth's death in 1603. Before we get to the fictionalized version of their stories, let's look at the facts.
Henry VIII came to the throne when he was only 17 years old. He married a Spanish princess, Catherine, who was Henry's deceased brother, Arthur's, wife (Arthur died at 15 and Catherine swore the marriage had never been consummated.) Henry went through a succession of wives in an attempt to father a male heir. When the Pope refused to allow him to divorce Catherine, Henry broke from the Roman Catholic Church and established the Church of England, bringing Protestantism to England. His marriage to Catherine produced a Catholic female, Mary Tudor, who reigned briefly after Henry's death but was succeeded by Elizabeth I, Henry's child by Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who reigned for forty-five years, but left no heir.
Mary Queen of Scots' grandmother was Henry VIII's sister and therefore Mary and Elizabeth were cousins, once removed. In the tangled web of European royalty, this was not exactly a close relationship. More importantly, Mary was raised a Catholic and Elizabeth a Protestant. At that time, the religious affiliation of a monarch could determine whether a country remained Catholic or not. The 1500's saw the rise Martin Luther and the Reformation in Europe, the beginning of Protestantism.
The story of Mary and Elizabeth has fascinated writers for almost five centuries. Elizabeth has been played on screen by every generation's great actress from Sarah Bernhardt to Cate Blanchett. Bette Davis played her twice, in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and The Virgin Queen.
Mary, also, has a long cinematic pedigree, dating from cinema's earliest days when Thomas Edison in 1895 made an eighteen second movie showing Mary's execution. In 1936, Katherine Hepburn played her in a John Ford film. In 1971, Vanessa Redgrave portrayed the doomed Queen while Glenda Jackson gave us a preview of her much lauded TV portrayal of Elizabeth I.
Now, a new movie, Mary, Queen of Scots, is devoted to the relationship between the two monarchs and has given Saorise Ronon (Lady Bird) as Mary and Margo Robbie (I, Tonya) as Elizabeth the chance to put their marks on these iconic roles. British theatre director, Josie Rourke, makes her film directorial debut of a Beau Williamon (House of Cards (Netflix)) script.
The performances of the two divas are very good, but, sadly, wasted in this plodding attempt to light a fire under this oft told story. The movie's sets and costumes are the best part of the movie, and credit must be given to the open casting, giving Adrian Lester the opportunity to play an English Lord who acts as an ambassador for Elizabeth to Mary.
The problems start immediately with one of those written prologues we see in so many historical dramas. Whenever I see one of these prologues I want to shout at the screen - a movie should not seem but be! If a fact is important, make it part of the movie, a visual medium, even in its silent era.
From there, the movie both tells us too little and too much. For example, it keeps referring to Mary and Elizabeth as 'sisters', which, if they were, would make their relationship very different. Also, the movie has Mary and other characters claim that she has a more legitimate claim to the English throne than Mary. Not true. It does show the importance of religion in the quarrel between the two Queens, but it does not make clear that, at that time, Scotland was a seperate, legitimate country from England.
The movie revolves around Mary's marriages, first to an English Lord and then to a Scottish nobleman. She does have one child, James, by the Englishman. Elizabeth never married and we see the physical change she undergoes when she contracts smallpox, scarring her face and causing her hair to fall out. Both women find themselves alone in a court of men, all of whom think that they know better than a woman what is best for her and their country. The founder of the Presbyterian Scottish Church, John Knox (David Tennant), rails against Mary, preaching that a woman can never rule a country. Mary is betrayed by the men in her life, including her half-brother. Elizabeth is shown to be more successful because, as the script claims, she becomes more man than woman.
When a country is ruled by a monarch, the monarch's children are not just fodder for tabloids, as they are today - no, having a child to ascend to the throne was one of the most solemn duties of a monarch. Mary succeeded; Elizabeth did not.
While history shows that Mary and Elizabeth never met, no fictional version of their story can resist a meeting of the two protagonists. In this version, they meet in what looks looks like a 16th century laundromat, with semi-transparent sheets screening them from each other's view as they walk around in a kind of textile version of Orson Welles's House of Mirrors in The Lady From Shanghai. It doesn't work. Rourke is betrayed by her theatre background as she forgets that five minutes in movietime can seem like a lifetime - the cousins seem to spend an eternity walking among the sheets before coming face to face.
A final word to anyone who wants to fictionalize this story in the future, forget the facts and follow the drama.
ROMA AND BRUCE ON NETFLIX
Two movies are new to Netflix this month and both come from other media.
Roma is a film by oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón that was released in a couple of theatres in November, but had already had its world premiere at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on August 30, 2018, where it won the Golden Lion. Releasing it in a limited number of cities is Netflix's strategy for making the movie eligible for Oscars and other film awards. In some areas, you can still see it in a theatre.
Springsteen On Broadway was a sold-out hit (grossing over $75 million in less than 300 performances) for rocker Bruce Springsteen that opened on Broadway in October, 2017 and was scheduled for only a two month run, but kept getting extended because of demand and, finally, closed on December 15, 2018, just a few days before a filmed live version appeared on Netflix. The Netflix airing was announced only in July, 2018, but it wasn't hard to surmise that the show would be filmed for posterity - and money. Last June, the show received a special Tony award (it wasn't eligible for a competitive Tony award because it did not provide the 850 or so tickets (+ 1s making it 1700 free tix) to Tony voters within eight weeks of its opening).
Both Roma and Springsteen On Broadway share the distinction of being very unusual movies.
Roma is Cuarón's look back (to 1970) at his childhood world in Mexico (the title refers to the Colonia Roma, a neighborhood in Mexico City). It is a black and white movie that, on a TV screen, looks like it is always slightly washed-out. Cuarón wrote and did the cinematography, too.
Roma looks at a year in the life of an upper-middle class family consisting of parents (the father (Fernando Grediaga) is only in a few scenes) , three children, grandmother, two servants (indigenous descendants as opposed to the obviously European-descended family) and a dog.
The movie's principal character is Cleodegaria "Cleo" Gutiérrez (Yalitza Aparicio) one of the family's two live-in servants. We follow her as she cleans the large house and cares for the children. She is more than just a servant - she is part of the family.. When she becomes unexpectedly pregnant, her life changes very little even though she fears being fired by Sofia (Marina de Tavira), the mother of the family. Sofia has her own problems when her husband leaves her early on in the movie although she tells the children that he is on an extended business trip.
Very little 'happens' in this movie. The plot is non-existent except for a chilling scene when student demonstrators are attacked by the police and a civilian paramilitary group shoots and kills a student in Cleo's presence. She sees the father of her expected child (who has abandoned her) in the murdering paramilitary group and this incident triggers her water breaking. What happens next is the best part of the movie as Cleo is rushed to the hospital.
Many critics have praised Roma as a poetic look at ordinary life, and that it is. While I found much of it slow and less 'poetic" than just an ordinary, it does have merit in showing life as it was lived by ordinary people living with the extraordinary complications that confront most of us in our everyday lives.
Roma's greatest asset is the acting of all of the people in the movie - or I should say, the semblance of non-acting. This kind of acting has a long tradition in mainstream movies, dating back to Marlon Brando's performance in The Men (1950) and culminating with Lee Strasberg's portrayal of aging mobster Hyman Roth in Godfather II. Although it has been more than 40 years since I first saw that movie, I remember the shock and thrill of seeing Strasberg in his first scene, sitting in the living room of a simple Florida home, watching a football game as Michael Corleone enters. I had never seen an actor like him. Not a trace of technique, not a hint of a performance, just being. Perhaps Cuarón was able to elicit these magical performances because almost the entire cast consists of first-time performers on screen.
Springsteen On Broadway is two and a half hours of just Bruce (his wife, Patti Scialfa, makes a brief appearance) telling stories and playing music. It is NOT a concert and he plays only a few of his many 'hits.' Instead, Springsteen On Broadway is the story of a man who made his living performing the magic act of making spellbinding, story-based music. He uses the usual microphones you see at a musical performance instead of those used in the theatre and this establishes, immediately, that he is not an 'actor' but rather a performer who tells stories. In fact, he ignores the mics and often walks away from them so that his voice has no amplification and this makes his performance even more 'real.' Director Thom Zimny has done a masterful job of keeping the show moving, having unobtrusive stage hands bring out to Bruce various guitars and an harmonica.
From the beginning Bruce tells us that he wore 'workingman's clothes' on stage, sang about factory-workers and laborers but he never had a 'real' job, never worked normal hours and never ever was even in a factory. He made it all up. That, he tells us, is how good he is.
Actually, he took on the persona of his father who did all the things that Bruce sang about, but never did himself. Growing up in Freehold, NJ, he tells of life in a small town in the 1950s and 60s in his dysfunctional family dominated by a cold, distant father. When he became a full-time musician, he headed not to New York (only an hour away) but to the New Jersey shore, where he was a one-way road to oblivion. He had to get away from the Jersey shore and, more, out of his small-time mentality to make it and to do that he had to take that leap that all artists must take out of their comfort zone and into the abyss. In his case, the abyss was a three day trip across the USA in a van, driving a motor vehicle for the first time in his life.
So Springsteen On Broadway is a look back by an artist to his childhood, too, and, just as Cuarón uses storytelling and film to transport us back, Springsteen uses his own artist's tools to transport us to a different time and place - his poetry, his words, his music and his inimitable bravuro style.
THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER
Or What happened to prodigies?
Anna's beautiful.
Beautiful...
enough...
for me.
The sun...
hits...
her...
yellow...
house.
It's almost like a sign from God.
That is the poem written by a precocious six year old boy, Jimmy (Parker Sevak). He is in the kindergarten class taught by Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhall), a middle-aged woman who feels she has missed her chance to be an artist, a poet, but, now, has been given the gift of nurturing a child-genius from her class whom she compares to Mozart.
Based on an Israeli movie of the same title, Sara Colangelo's The Kindergarten Teacher examines the life of a teacher who, like the old adage states, cannot do so she teaches.
Lisa has taken an adult education course in writing where she reads her haiku poems to the class. Her stilted poems never quite convey her yearnings and disappointments or her deep feeling that she and all of her family and friends are failures. When the class and its flirty, handsome teacher (Gael Garcia Bernal) greet her epiphanies with indifference she realizes that the time to learn enough to become a poet has passed her by. She reads her poem to her husband (Michael Chernus) who greets it with encouraging words but, obviously, is not moved by it.
When Lisa, accidently, hears Jimmy recite the "Anna" poem she is struck by its deep, moving simplicity. Knowing how wonderful it is, she passes it off as her own poem in her writing class and suddenly she is the star of the class.The poems (written by Kaveh Akbar and Ocean Vuong) are simple yet moving.
Lisa's motives are mixed. She wants the recognition given to her by these stolen gems, but, also, she wants to help this poet-prodigy. She contacts his single-parent dad who runs a strip club. He ignores her but she goes to the club and confronts him. He tells her that he is not interested in his son becoming a literary aesthete like his brother who has a job as a glorified spell checker (editor) at a newspaper earning a pittance. While he is happy his son is doing well, he is not going to go out of his way to encourage his son to be a poet.
Ultimately, The Kindergarten Teacher is about the kind of world we want. Do we want a world that encourages artist? Rewards them? Being an artist is hard and usually not a financially rewarding profession.If you had a choice - great but poor artist child or lottery-winning but soulless child - which would you choose?
Really?
BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE ⭐️⭐️ ⭐️⭐️
by Armen Pandola
All of us have secrets. All of us seek redemption.
But what if the secrets are deadly and the redemption is phoney?
In Bad Times at the El Royale, writer/director Drew Goddard takes us to a run-down hotel/motel on the border between California and Nevada (near Reno) in the late 1960s. The border is more than geographical, it is an existential border between lives that could be and lives that are.
The 'prequel' opening shows a man burying a bag under the floorboards of one of the rooms. Ten years later ....
Four travelers arrive: a traveling salesman (Jon Hamm), a priest (Jeff Bridges), a singer (Cynthia Erivo) and a mysterious young woman (Dakota Johnson). Each of them appears to be something other than who they claim to be. Even the motel clerk (Lewis Pullman) is a bit off - he is preoccupied by something other than his simple duties.
What happens in the next 2 hours and 20 minutes is a roller coaster ride that starts slowly in order to build up to its dramatic moments so that it can get over that peak of background detail and start the real ride. And while Reno had very little rain in the 1960s (its yearly average has nearly doubled in recent years due to the fake global warming) its yearly average rain falls in one night soaking the characters and their shimmering world.
It is difficult to review a movie when almost everything you can say about its plot is a spoiler. So, let's forget the plot - it's just a vehicle like the cars you ride in on the roller coaster.
The real story is the interaction of the iconic characters that Goddard takes from classic film noir movies: the good/bad guy, the beautiful and beautifully talented victim, the child-like bad girl, the break-the-rules cop, the killer seeking redemption and finding it only through doing what he does best, the charismatic psychopath cult leader - yeah, there's a lot going on in this movie. All of this is wrapped in up in reflecting mirror paper that gives it all a House of Mirrors quality.
Vaguely reminiscent of a score of film noir classics, but still its own wonderful mixture of crashing iconic plots, Bad Times will take you to places you have only nightmared about.
Finally, it has one of the best juke box scores of any movie in recent years. With more than a dozen hits from the 60s, many of them sung by the impeccable Ms.Erivo (who won a Tony for her performance in The Color Purple), Bad Times is - ok, I gotta do it - Bad Times is a guaranteed good time for you. Sorry.
TEN BEST COURTROOM MOVIES
As a writer and a trial attorney, I have often cringed at the way some movies portray what goes on in a courtroom. All of America saw the O.J. trial, but that was a very unusual case that was far from the typical trial, let alone murder trial.
In most cases, there is one attorney for the defense and one attorney for the prosecution, or, if it is a civil case - that's where nobody goes to jail but one party is suing another usually for money damages, as in an auto accident - then there is one attorney for the person suing (plaintiff) and one for the person or company being sued (defendant).
Most trials last for a few days, rarely more than a week. Usually, there is no publicity about the case. Many cases are tried by a judge, alone, without any jury. If there is a jury ( and every criminal defendant has the right to a jury trial, but, as I said, many waive that right) then the jury is selected in a few hours.
What distinguishes the good courtroom movies from the not so good is how effectively the movie uses the elements of a trial to heighten the suspense, the drama being portrayed.
Many lists of best courtroom dramas list movies that are only tangentially about the courtroom. For example, I think Michael Clayton is a great movie, but very little of it is about what happens in a courtroom. Rather, the movie is about attorneys and the role they play in our system of justice. The 'title character' is a 'fixer' - he gets things done, usually outside of the courtroom. The center of the story, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson in an incredible tour de force performance), much like Howard Beale from Network, is an attorney who 'goes off the deep end' because, finally, he breaks through the barrier that allows attorneys to represent evil people and companies without any guilt. Arthur feels guilt and that changes his life.
So, in my professional opinion, here are the ten best movies at portraying what happens in a courtroom.
ANATOMY OF A MURDER - It does not get any better than this. The book on which the movie is based was written by a prosecutor with vast courtroom experience. The story is simple - an army officer (Ben Gazzara) kills a man whom the officer's wife (Lee Remick) claims raped her. There is no question that he killed him and the only question is - can he be found guilty of murder? His attorney (Jimmy Stewart in one of his best performances) coaches Gazzara in the subtle way that most attorneys do by telling him that there is only one way he can be found not guilty - if he was in the grip of an 'irresistible impulse' (a form of insanity). Most of the movie takes place in the courtroom. If you haven't seen this one - you are in for a real treat.
WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION - An ex-soldier (Tyrone Power) is accused of murdering an older woman for her money. The alleged murderer is married (to Marlene Dietrich). An aging barrister (Charles Laughton) takes on the case against his doctor's orders (he was recovering from a heart attack). While much of the story is told in flashbacks, the bulk of the movie is the trial - and there are incredible performances by all involved!
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - A small town lawyer, Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), in the deep South in the 1930s is given the job of defending an African-American (Brock Peters) accused of raping a white girl. The story is told from the point of view of the lawyer's children, especially his six year old daughter, Scout. This movie and the character of Atticus Finch are used as a template for what every attorney strives to be, but rarely achieves.
MY COUSIN VINNY - Newly minted attorney Vincent Gambini (Joe Pesci) and his fiancee, Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) come to the rescue of Vinny's cousin who is accused of murder in Alabama. Trouble is, Vinny has no idea how to try a case let alone a murder case. His ignorance proves to be his best asset. Law professors use this movie to teach trial tactics. The lesson is simple: forget what you've been taught and go with what you know. Bonus - this is one of the funniest movies you will see.
JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG - Is a society guilty for the crimes of its leaders? A group of judges and lawyers in Germany during the Nazi reign are put on trial for crimes against humanity. Maximilian Schell won a Best Actor Oscar for portraying their defense attorney. Spencer Tracy is at his best as the American judge who has to decide whether Nazi judges can be found guilty for applying inhumane laws. Every year, this movie becomes more relevant.
INHERIT THE WIND - Can laws be passed denying the teaching of certain scientific findings? A fictional account of the Scopes Monkey trial in which a Tennessee teacher is prosecuted for teaching evolution in his classroom even though there is a state law banning it. Spencer Tracy (the Clarence Darrow character) defends the teacher against prosecutor Fredric March (the Williams Jenning Bryan character). Another movie that has come back into relevance with the denial of global warming by some politicians.
ADAM'S RIB - Tracy and Hepburn. They are both lawyers. When a wife (Judy Holliday) shoots her husband (Tom Ewell) prosecutor Tracy is assigned the case. Hepburn decides to defend her. The courtroom scenes are some of the funniest ever written. The writers, Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, were married so the interplay between Tracy and Hepburn has the feel of a real couple. All are in the very capable hands of George Cukor who specialized in movies about couples (The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Born Yesterday and A Star is Born (Garland-Mason version)).
JAGGED EDGE - Husband (Jeff Bridges) is on trial for killing heiress wife and hires former prosecutor (Glenn Close) to defend him. She falls in love with him. The courtroom scenes with prosecutor Peter Coyote are spot on. I think this is the only very good script written by Joe Eszterhas who is famous for these kind of edgy, sexy thrillers.
THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE - Keanu Reeves as an attorney who sells his soul to the devil (Al Pacino) to get ahead. Reeves must defend a bunch of sicko, abusive men. His courtroom tactics are some of the best ever put on screen. The movie, itself, would be a classic but for its excursion into horror movie territory. In spite of that, this is one of Pacino's best performances as he argues for reigning in hell rather than serving in heaven.
THE LETTER - Bette Davis shoots her lover as the movie opens so this is not a who-done-it but rather a why-did-she-do-it. While the courtroom scenes do not take up much actual time, the conflicts that the attorney (James Stephenson) must face in defending someone whom he knows is guilty are well presented. There were two endings shot for this movie - I think they used the wrong one. In spite of that, this is a movie that goes to the heart of what it means to try to make a just world.
TOP 10 FILM NOIR MOVIES
SUNSET BOULEVARD - An aging silent movie star writes her comeback movie with the help of her much younger lover, a down-and-out writer. Both get more than they bargained for.
THE THIRD MAN - An American writer of throw-away western novels travels to post-WW II Vienna to meet his old pay, Harry Lime, and discovers that Harry is dead, sort of.
DOUBLE INDEMNITY - A wise-cracking insurance salesman falls for a wanna-be widow and concocts a plan to cash in on the accidental death (with a little help) of her husband.
WHITE HEAT - An undercover cop shadows a mad killer and hopes to nab him before the looney bin does.
THE ASPHALT JUNGLE - a big-time caper goes wrong when the criminals are undone by their own demons.
THE MALTESE FALCON - A private eye is hired by a mysterious woman in search of a priceless statue of a precious jewel encrusted falcon, the stuff that dreams are made of.
THE KILLING : A plot to steal loads of money from a racetrack goes terribly wrong when a hen-pecked robber decides to let his cheating wife in on the details.
D.O.A. - An accountant on a vacation finds that he has been murdered and now must find his killer and why he was murdered.
KEY LARGO - A gangster who was deported comes home and finds himself confronted by an old dying man, his daughter and an ex-GI who doesn't know what he fought for but finds out.
THE BIG HEAT - Corruption is deeply embedded in a big city police department and there is little that one honest cop can do, but when he tries and his wife gets killed by the bomb meant for him, he gets help from an unusual source, the killer's moll.
So what makes a movie 'film noir?'
There is a lot of reasonable disagreement about that - and I am not certain that it matters. Film noir is more about a feeling, a style, a way of looking at the world through blue-tinted, cracked glasses. Directors like Billy Wilder have this feeling built into almost every movie he made. Look at The Apartment, a great movie that is both funny and sad. It borders on the noir - if the cheaters who use the apartment weren't so ridiculous and if the woman had been killed by the boss to prevent her from telling his wife, it could easily have turned noir. Or look at Some Like It Hot - all the elements are there, but instead of 'blue-tinted' the movie is bright orange with the gangsters being more inept that the musicians. It is no coincidence that the most successful (artistically) Wilder movies were all black and white.
In looking at film noir flicks, there are a few common elements. Almost all film noir have these elements and the best have them is spades.
There are 5 essential ingredients:
When it was made. From 1940 to 1960 is when film noir movies were made. After that, there are many movies that contain film noir elements but all are a reaction to the original genre. Take Chinatown. It has many film noir elements but it reacts to the genre and is best appreciated by those who know the original genre. For example, the first scene shows Jake, the P.I., meeting with a client whose wife he followed and proved was cheating on him. This is a reaction to Raymond Chandler's P.I. Philip Marlowe who tells us that he doesn't do 'divorce cases.' Jake not only does divorce work, it's his "métier" as he tells us.
Murder. No murder, no noir. Period. Sometimes the murder is at the heart of the story (Double Indemnity) and sometimes it is woven into its fabric, like Harry Lime's murder of those who are treated with his tainted penicillin.
Woman. There is always a woman at the heart of any film noir movie, often more than one. In Double Indemnity, there is Phyllis Dietrichson and her step daughter, Lola. The lady isn't always a femme fatale - take White Heat: there is the luscious, lovely Mrs. Cody Jarrett, but the real lady of the movie is Ma Jarrett who is as tough as her son.
A Big Dream. There are lots of movies about murders and crime and punishment, but a true film noir has more than that - it has a Big Dream at its core. Often, the best film noir movies have many Big Dreams, one for each major character or more than one. In Sunset Boulevard, Norma Desmond wants to recapture the glory of a bygone time when she was the Queen of Hollywood and when every man wanted her. Joe wants to survive in Hollywood.
Deception. It is as simple as 'oh the tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.' In Sunset Boulevard, Joe thinks Norma's script stinks and he won't tell his friends how he is able to afford silver cigarette cases.
SPIELBERG’S BRIDGE OF SPIES
Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies is a Cold War drama set in the early 1960’s. The movie is crowded with stories that all crash into each other. Sadly, they never generate any real drama. How could the man who made Jaws come to give us movies that have about as much drama as an election for President in Russia.
The movie starts by showing us a guy painting a self portrait. Rudolph Abel (Mark Rylance, recently of Wolf Hall fame). is a very unlikely spy, seemingly a simple man engrossed in his work as a painter. When he is arrested, James Donovan (Tom Hanks), an insurance defense attorney, a ‘common man’ type who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and children, is picked by the Bar Association to represent the suspected Russian spy. Out of the blue so to speak, we are told the story of Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), the pilot of a US spy plan shot down while over the USSR. Powers is taken prisoner by the Soviets.
Gee, I wonder how these dots are going to get connected?
Donavan insists on giving Abel the best defense he can. In the process, he becomes as hated a figure as Abel. The trial judge, the newspapers, his friends and even his family, all try to convince him that he only has to go through the motions of representing Abel and no one expects him to get Abel acquitted because we all know he’s guilty, right? Well, yes, we all do. The audience is shown from the start that Abel really is a spy so there is no suspense there. Abel’s trial turns into a ‘show trial’ in spite of Donavan’s efforts. Donavan’s only success comes when he convinces the trial judge to sentence Abel to 30 years instead of the electric chair.
And this is where the plot connects the Powers spy plane story – the CIA wants to exchange Abel for Powers. It asks Donavan to act as negotiator because the US government does not want to get involved directly in the negotiations. Donavan accepts and heads to Berlin.
Now the movie could have just told us these stories and it would be a straight cold war drama – but no, its hero Donavan isn’t going to just be a pawn for the CIA. So, enter a US student studying in Germany who is caught on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall on the day it is erected. It seems he is trying to save a girl he is in love with, or maybe it’s just a friend – it doesn’t matter because the student is just a plot device. He is arrested on charges of being a spy for a reason that will become clear.
Donavan, after a series of cat and mouse games with various agents of the Soviets secures the deal to release Powers, but he will not agree to it unless the student is also released. The CIA goes nuts – it wants Powers and doesn’t care about the student. Donavan won’t budge – he is a decent American and we all know that decent Americans are far better than their duly elected ghastly government. Pont made. Story of stupid American student understood – he is there to be rescued.
The screenplay was pieced together by more than one person – three or maybe two and a half - Joel and Ethan Coen were brought aboard to redo the original Matt Charman script. For this reason, the script is choppy and none of the characters is fully realized – except Donavan. What I hated about Mark Rylance in Wolf Hall was his stoical almost comatose attitude to everything that happened. In this movie, he is actually more deadpan, but his lack of concern about everything is used in the plot. On more than one tense occasion, Donavan asks his client if he is worried and Abel always answers, “Would it help?” It might help if Rylance moved an eyebrow once in awhile.
The movie is 2 hours and 20 minutes long and could have been brought in less than 2 hours. There are lots of Spielberg ‘mood shots’. The music is like listening to crème puffs oozing out their goo then exploding at the ‘dramatic’ points – John Williams was ill (probably indigestion listening to his own scores after Jaws) so Thomas Newman filled in as pastry conductor. There are a lot of appearances by fine actors (Alan Alda among them) who are given about as many lines as Rylance has facial expressions.
Keeping in character with Bridge of Spies, I am now going to do a flip and stitch in a new perspective – in spite of all the above, go see it. Tom Hanks is just so good at playing these kinds of roles that you shouldn’t miss it. Not the showy stuff of Forrest Gump or Philadelphia, but the kind of roles that Henry Fonda gave us in 12 Angry Men and a host of other films. Another quietly fantastic Hanks’ performance is worth the price of admission.
Ron Shelton wrote and directed this movie about a minor league baseball team and its owner, a very liberated lady of means.
Leading off is everybody’s favorite liberated lady, Susan Sarandon, playing the club owner. Every spring, she selects one player on her team to go the distance with for the season. Opinionated, sexy, articulate and more sure of herself than Mike Scioscia with a line-up card in his hand, Sarandon as club owner Annie Savoy has the perfect name and the perfect part to show off her considerable comedic talents.
Batting second is Robert Wuhl playing an infielder who is bound to be a life-long minor leaguer. Wuhl is just fun to watch as the guy who is always a hit short of a star. When there is a too-long meeting at the mound between the pitcher and catcher, Wuhl runs out to put in his two cents – and hits a homer with his straight-faced advice.
Tim Robbins is batting third in this line-up while playing Evie Caleb ‘Nuke’ LaLoosh, a fire-balling pitcher whose incredible number of strikeouts is only excelled by his walks. He can lose a no-hitter. Robbins is at the start of his excellent career just as ‘Nuke” is.
Annie savoy picks Nuke as her season partner and it certainly helps their chemistry that they fell in love during the filming of this movie (Shelton became their first child’s godfather).
Kevin Costner bats clean-up and does most of the heavy lifting as Crash Davis, an aging catcher who has spent so many years in the minors that he is approaching the record for most home runs hit in the minor leagues. It’s not the title he wants. As he says, “I’m the player to be named later.”
You don’t have to like baseball to like this movie but it helps. It’s most famous sequence is when Annie invite Nuke and Crash to her place for a ‘tryout’ and Crash answers Annie’s question about what he believes in with a famous speech –
Well, I believe in the soul... the cock...the pussy... the small of a woman's back... the hangin' curveball... high fiber... good scotch... that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent overrated crap... I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a Constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Goodnight.
As Crash says Goodnight to Annie and Nuke, she runs after him and Crash rejects her offer to become her drone of the season with a great line, “I’m not interested in a woman who’s interested in that boy [Nuke].”
Bull Durham is a lot of fun. It is one of the three best baseball movies ever made – along with Major League and A League of Their Own.
Ron Shelton will be at the screening, probably to pitch the new musical based on this movie that opened in Atlanta in 2014. The NYT went all the way down there to give it a solid 2 out of 4 stars. Now, it may be headed to Broadway.
The last time baseball was the subject of a Broadway musical was Damn Yankees – but back then musicals were made into movies and not the other way around.
BULL DURHAM
Writer/Director: Ron Shelton
Cast: Kevin Costner; Susan Sarandon; Tim Robbins; Trey Wilson; Robert Wuhl
TCM FESTIVAL: SUNDAY, APRIL 29, 4-6PM AT EGYPTIAN THEATRE
CONFLICTING WITH
TEN COMMANDMENTS (1:30-6:00 PM) CHINESE IMAX THEATRE
SILK STOCKINGS (3:30-5:45 PM) CHINESE MULTIPLEX HOUSE 1
HAMLET (1948) (3:45 – 6:15 PM) CHINESE MULTIPLEX HOUSE 6
BULLIT (1968)
A mobster who is going to rat on his fellow mobsters is being baby-sat by San Francisco cops. When things go wrong – we have a movie.
Steve McQueen plays Bullit, a detective with a sense of style worthy of a James Bond. McQueen started acting on TV in the early 50s and by !958 got his own series, “Wanted Dead or Alive.” His first big movie break came in 1960 when he was one of The Magnificent Seven. A couple of years after that, he played another memorable cog in another hit adventure movie, The Great Escape. Then came a series of good off-beat movies that were so-so hits: Soldier in the Rain (opposite Jackie Gleason), Love With A Proper Stranger (with Natalie Wood), Baby the Rain Must Fall (teamed with Lee Remick in a Henry Foote script), The Cincinnati Kid (heading a stellar cast including Karl Malden, Rip Torn, Tuesday Weld, Ann Margaret and E.G. Robinson) and finally a certified Major Motion Picture – The Sand Pebbles, directed by Robert Wise with a $12 million budget and an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. The next year, 1968, McQueen hit the jackpot with two of his most iconic movies, The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullit.
The very name of the movie, Bullit, conjures up a hard-nosed but sleek purveyor of death. McQueen is just as comfortable in the seat of his Ford Mustang 390 GT 2+2 Fastback as he is in the arms of Jacqueline Bisset, Bullit’s oh-so-hip girlfriend. The plot doesn’t make a lot of sense but who cares? Robert Vaughn as a politician-on -he-make provides the rich-but-clueless push-back to McQueen’s street savvy rule-breaking-but-effective cop.
Of course, the highlight of the movie is the car chase (sorry Jacqueline). It’s not only McQueen vs. the bad guys, it’s Mustang vs. Charger, Ford vs Dodge, light vs dark! The chase begins in typical McQueen-cool fashion. The bad guys are chasing McQueen when, suddenly, they find that now McQueen is chasing them – for about 12 minutes. And yes, McQueen was driving, at least for some of the chase. It is not a spoiler to tell you that McQueen survives and the bad guys don’t.
But the movie ends on a bittersweet note. Bullit triumphs but there are no kudos, no medals, no citations – just another day with Jacqueline lying in bad asleep and Bullit washing his hands. But can the dirt of years of hauling away human garbage ever be washed off? Heavy man, heavy.
BULLIT
Writer: Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner from a novel by Robert Pike
Director: Peter Yates
Cast: Steve McQueen, Jacquline Bisset, Robert Vaughn, Simon Oakland, Norman Fell (and watch for a cabbie played by Robert Duvall)
TCM FESTIVAL: SATURDAY APRIL 28, 11:45 AM TO 2 PM, TLC CHINESE THEATRE IMAX
CONFLICTING WITH:
OUTRAGE (11:30 AM– 1:00 PM) EGYPTIAN THEATRE
KRAMER V KRAMER (11:45 AM -1:30 PM)CHINESE MULTIPLEX HOUSE 1
THIS THING CALLED LOVE (11:30 AM TO 1:30 PM) CHINESE MULTIPLEX HOUSE 4
WHEN YOU READ THIS LETTER (11:45 AM – 1:45 PM) CHINESE MULTIPLEX HOUSE 6
WINDJAMER (10 AM – 12:45 PM) ARCLIGHT CINERAMA DOME
The Days of Wine and Roses is the story of two adults who meet and marry. They live a kind of 1950's dream life with, at first blush, a harmless annoyance: he liked to drink but she has been brought up a teetotaler. She does like chocolate so he convinces her to drink Brandy Alexanders (cognac, crème de cacao, and cream). Both end up having addictive personalities and cannot stop drinking. Soon, he loses his job as a PR person and they begin a slow and painful descent into alcoholic hell with stops on the way for alienating friends and family, attempting to reform and arguing over who is to blame for what has happened.
The Days of Wine and Roses began as a TV drama on the legendary Playhouse 90. Written by J.P. Miller, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie, the live TV version is available on YouTube.
For the movie, Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick were brought as was director Blake Edwards. Only Charles Bickford as her father was hired from the TV version.
In 1962 when the movie was released, alcoholism was rarely portrayed on the screen. Most famously, there was The Lost Weekend which was a Best Picture winner in 1945, also winning Best Director for Billy Wilder and Best Screenplay for Wilder and Charles Brackett. But that movie depicts an alcoholic falling off the wagon while Days shows us a couple who become alcoholics almost as part of their courtship and then marriage.
This movie is a serious but entertaining look at real people with real problems in a real world. The fact that Lemmon and Remick, two of the most likeable and talented actors of their time, are the couple who live out this nightmare make the movie all the more heartbreaking.
Take a look and see what movies can be.
Dunkirk by writer/director Chris Nolan is the story of how the British at the beginning of World War II were able to snatch a small victory from the jaws of an enormous defeat.
The Germans had deployed their new military tactic, the Blitzkrieg, to run over the low countries, then conquer France in less than three weeks. In doing so, it defeated the combined French and British armies. The remnants of those armies found themselves on the beaches of Dunkirk, with the Germans on one side and the English Channel on the other. While England was less than fifty miles away, there were almost 400,000 troops on the beaches of Dunkirk and evacuating them would not be easy.
Hitler was convinced by Air Marshall Goering that the task of eliminating the troops on the beach was best left to the Luftwaffe and that the ground attack should be halted. After weeks of non-stop attacks, they could use the rest.
At that time, the British had the largest fleet in Europe, but getting the troops off the Dunkirk beaches was a tactical nightmare. Large ships became easy targets for German bombers, especially the terror-evoking dive bomber, the Stuka.
I saw Dunkirk at the Aero theatre in Santa Monica where the attraction was not only the large screen 70 mm presentation of the movie, but an after-movie talk with the writer-director, himself.
Dunkirk concentrates on three characters: a young British soldier’s attempts to avoid getting killed (designated in the movie with the title, (The Land), a British pilot’s crossing the English Channel in a spitfire (the British fighter plane) to shoot down German planes harassing the rescue attempt (The Air) and a 50-ish Englishman, played by Mark Rylance, who crosses the channel in his own small boat, the Moonstone, to pitch in (yeah, The Sea).
The movie is all about the special effects and the visuals. There is no attempt to give any of the characters, even the main ones, any kind of back story. Yes, we sympathize with them, but they are fighting Nazis so it isn’t that hard to guess where your sympathies will land.
Perhaps no incident portrays the lack of any serious story telling in the movie better than what happens to a teenage boy who makes the trip from England to Dunkirk on The Moonstone to lend a hand. Along the way, the Moonstone picks up a British sailor whose boat was sunk. He acts very strange and insists that the small boat turn around and go back to England since there was nothing that it could do at Dunkirk. Rylance ignores him and later tells his son that the man is obviously ‘shell-shocked.’ When this sailor tries to physically force Rylance to turn around the boat, he pushes the teenage boy down stairs and the boy hits his head which starts to bleed profusely. As they are caring for this young boy who appears to be in extremis, The boy says that all he ever really wanted is for his name to be in the local newspaper for doing something good. Need I tell you what happens when the boy dies and the Moonstone makes it back to England with a score of rescued soldiers?
And that is how the entire movie moves along, one plodding moment to another. Yes, some of the visuals are very good and so is the sound. You may have noticed that I have not mentioned most of the actors. In fact, in 45 minutes of talking about the making of the movie, neither did Nolan. The actors are irrelevant to his way of making movies. He did go on and on about how he wanted to make a movie to a certain beat or rhythm that would go like a bolero with all crescendos. Yeah, right.
The hook for this movie is that it is ‘unlike any other war movie.’ Not really. The idea of isolating a few stories in a battlefield of dramas is as old as All’s Quiet on the Western Front. Technically, it cannot hold a candle to Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. And as for portraying the reality of warfare, Kubrick’s The Paths of Glory is far superior.
So, why all the buzz about Dunkirk? It is fairly short for a ‘war epic’ coming in at 1hr, 46m. And it does have the kind of appeal that video games have. In fact, there were many moments that made me think that Nolan was more inspired by Call of Duty than Battleground. If that is your kind of thing – and Dunkirk’s box office of over $500 million is proof that there are a lot of people (my guess, mostly teenage males) who love this kind of mindless visual house of thrills – then go see it. Believe me, it’s a hell of a ride, if not much of a movie.
In the late 1920s, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur wrote a fast-paced play about a reluctant newspaper reporter and his ink-soaked editor. It was called, Front Page and it was a hit. In 1931, it was made into a movie with Pat O’Brien (Hildy) and Adolph Menjou (Walter). It lost something in the transition from stage to screen as so many plays did – and do (e.g. August: Osage County).
Then in 1940, Howard Hawkes had the inspired idea of giving the fighting reporters a license to fight – he married them. Since it was 1940, one of the roles went through a sex change and suddenly the movie came to life.
Cary Grant plays the ex-husband editor and Rosalind Russell is the reporter who left to get a divorce in Reno and returned with a fiancé, Ralph Bellamy. The dialogue is faster than a speeding bullet and you will have to see this movie more than once to catch even a small percentage of the repartee.
Roz visits Cary at his office at the newspaper to tell him that she is quitting the newspaper and reporting and will go to upstate New York to live with her new husband who doesn’t want her to work. Here is a sample of the sparring and remember that this is spoken at break-tongue speed and often overlapping:
Walter: What's the use of fighting, Hildy? I'll tell you what you do. You come back to work on the paper, and if we find we can't get along in a friendly fashion, we'll get married again.
Hildy: Oh Walter, you're wonderful - in a loathsome sort of way. Listen, Walter, you are no longer my husband and no longer my boss. And you're not going to be my boss.
Walter: All right, take it. Work for somebody else. That's the gratitude I get.
Hildy: Oh, I wish you'd stop hamming.
Walter: What were you when you came here five years ago? A little college girl from a school of journalism. I took a doll-faced hick.
Hildy: Well, you wouldn't take me if I hadn't been doll-faced...
Walter: Listen. I made a great reporter out of you, Hildy. But you won't be half as good on any other paper and you know it. We're a team. That's what we are. You need me and I need you, and the paper needs both of us.
Hildy: Sold American! Listen, Walter, the paper's gonna have to get along without me. So are you. It just didn't work out, Walter.
Walter: Well, it would have worked out if you'd been satisfied with just being editor and reporter - but not you! You had to marry me and spoil everything.
Hildy: I wasn't satisfied? I suppose I proposed to you?
Walter: And I still claim I was tight the night I proposed to you. If you had been a gentleman, you would have forgotten all about it. But not you.
[Hildy throws her pocketbook at the back of his head, but he ducks]
Walter: You're losing your eye. You used to be able to pitch better than that.
The plot is silly but moves along and keeps pace with the dialogue. The supporting cast is superb – convicted cop-killer John Qualen, corrupt Sheriff Gene Lockhart and more corrupt Mayor Clarence Kolb keep the pace at warp speed.
There are few movies that capture the marriage of journalism and politics as well as this one. Lies seem to be the common bond.
HIS GIRL FRIDAY
Producer-Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Charles Lederer
Based on the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
Cast: Cary Grant (Walter Burns), Rosalind Russell (Hildy Johnson), Ralph Bellamy (Bruce Baldwin), Gene Lockhart (Sheriff Hartwell), Helen Mack (Molly Malloy), Porter Hall (Murphy), Ernest Truex (Bensinger), Cliff Edwards (Endicott), Clarence Kolb (Mayor), Roscoe Karns (McCue), Frank Jenks (Wilson) Regis Toomey (Sanders), Abner Biberman (Diamond Louie), John Qualen (Earl Williams), Alma Kruger (Mrs. Baldwin) Billy Gilbert (Joe Pettibone)
BW-92m.
M ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
THE BEGINNING OF THE CRIME DRAMA
by Armen Pandola
This month, you can watch Fritz Lang’s great movie about murder, madness and responsibility on TCM. Peter Lorre gives one of the greatest performances in movie history as the compulsive killer of children.
This movie is the first police procedural as it details all the different ways that the police use to try and catch a serial killer. As a police official points out, this is the most difficult crime to solve since the killer acts purely on impulse, taking advantage of circumstances to fulfill his mad obsession to kill.
If you have never seen it, I can guarantee that you will never forget it.
OCEANS WHATEVER
Oceans 11 was a movie made by and with The Rat Pack, a group of Hollywood pals, most famously, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Peter Lawford who found the story and pitched it to Sinatra who liked it.
The movie was about a daring plan to rob all the major Las Vegas casinos on New Year's Eve at the stroke of midnight. While the movie was being made, Sinatra and pals performed in the very casinos they were robbing in the movie. It was the first major cross-media marketing in show business.
Oceans 11 was a big hit. What held the plot together was more than the chemistry of its stars - it had a story. Danny Ocean headed a platoon of soldiers in WWII that was a great fighting unit, but, after the war, when they went their separate ways, they all flopped. Danny is an ever-losing gambler whose wife left him because he can't see a woman without making a pass. Dean Martin's character is a two-bit singer still playing the lounge. Davis works on a garbage truck. Lawford is a rich mama's boy, still dependent on her for financing his playboy lifestyle. The caper to rob the casinos is not just a chance to finally strike it rich, it's a chance to be a team one more time - to go back to being part of a something bigger than any of them could ever be alone. To fight the good fight once more, but this time, victory pays. What causes their downfall (this was 1960, crime did not pay) are their individual faults. A woman Danny played around with then dropped takes revenge. Lawford's new 'stepfather' agrees to help the casino's owners get back their money and he tracks the heist to his new stepson and his friend, Ocean.
Great caper movies are all about characters and relationships, just like all great movies. Sure, there has to be some gimmick, some kind of raz-ma-taz to make us sit up and think - wow, cool. But it needs something more - it needs a reason for the heist.
One of the first caper movies was The Asphalt Jungle, a John Huston movie about a jewelry heist and a bunch of underworld characters who can never escape the flaws that have kept them losers for most of their lives. Rififi , The Killing, Topkapi, How To Steal a Million (the only rom-com caper film ever made), The Thomas Crown Affair, Seven Thieves, Thief, The Great Train Robbery (a period piece caper), The Sting (the only caper movie to win Best Picture) a pair of English caper-comedies, The Lavender Hill Mob and The Ladykillers and more recently, The Score. All have a common element - the caper is just the excuse for the characters to do something else, something that's more than just robbing money, something that's about soul.
In 2001, Warner Bros. dusted off the Oceans 11 script and developed a new franchise with George Clooney taking on the role of Danny Ocean. There have been three Oceans movies, all a little worse than their predecessor. The main problem is that they are all just about the caper. There is nothing that ties the group of thieves together other than their quest for bucks - kind of like the movies themselves. They all made a ton of money, so they were all successful. Right?
Now, WB has gathered eight actresses to star in a #metoo Oceans movie - Oceans 8. I am certain that some genius at Warners came up with the number 8 as the rounded, sensual, feminine equivalent to the double penile 11. Oceans 8 stars eight actresses led by Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett. The conceit is that Bullock is Danny Ocean's felonious sister. Her caper is to steal $150 million in diamonds from a Met Museum Ball during Fashion Week in New York. It will be released on June 7.
There is nothing to suspect from the trailer that Oceans 8's makers have understood the true nature of a great caper movie, but one can hope. What we do know is that if this movie is more successful than the distaff Ghostbusters was, then we will see an Oceans 18 (combine the casts for a movie that stars both men and women? What an idea!), Jane Bond (Gillian Anderson has been mentioned), Hilliary Potter, Missioness: Impossible and Spider Woman - wait, they made that one already and there will be no more female arachnid movies. But there will be more action and franchise movies led by actresses. Of course, that is a good thing. But what is not good is if the makers of these movies just substitute females for males and change nothing else. Men and women are different - there are no female mass murders and the senseless violence that seems to be attractive to most young males is not to most young females. So, please include more women in franchise movies, but make them from that feminine point of view and not just a rehash of the same senseless and unreal violence but with lipstick. Let’s really change movies, for the better.
Mel Brooks wanted to make a movie about how two producers schemed to make a killing on a sure-flop musical entitled, Springtime for Hitler. The problem was that no one wanted to finance a movie titled, Springtime for Hitler.
After several years of begging, Sidney Glazier agreed to produce it and the money was put up by Joseph Levine, a producer with an international reputation. Like many movies that end up being classics, The Producers was made by people who ended up hating each other (well, except for Gene Wilder, of course). It was a very unhappy eight week shoot in NYC. Then came months of editing. Finally, it was released, sort of. It opened in a small theatre in suburban Philadelphia (Glazier's hometown) where I saw it. There were not a lot of people in the theatre and no one was laughing except for me and a friend who had seen it the night before and dragged me to it the next night.
Then, it was released in New York. Most of the critics didn't get it - they criticized the movie for being about a musical based on the life of Hitler. One critic wondered if they were going to do a musical about cancer next. In spite of the mixed reviews, the movie made money in NYC but was, generally, a flop. The fact that the producers in the movie wanted to produce a sure fire disaster musical as part of their scheme to steal millions and that is why they produced a musical about Hitler was overlooked. A musical about Hitler? This was blasphemy!
THE SEA WOLF ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
by Armen Pandola
Traditionally, movies are considered the creation of their directors, that is, since the French New Wave declared the director to be the guiding hand on all movies.
Gore Vidal once said that when he was in Hollywood in the 1950-early 60s, the people who made movies would have thought it hilarious that people believed movies were made , mostly, by directors. It was the producers who made movies.
As in all arts that deal with telling a story, it all begins with the writer. In the case of The Sea Wolf, that was Jack London. In 1904, he wrote The Sea Wolf and it was a bestseller, as were most things written by London. The book told the story of Wolf Larsen, a sea captain who was cruel, intelligent, cunning, violent and crazy. The plot is simple: Larsen's ship, The Ghost, rescues from a shipwreck a dandified writer, Humphrey van Weyden, who is subject to all kinds of cruelties aboard The Ghost. Eventually, van Weyden and another shipwreck victim, a young woman, escape from The Ghost and it is the skills they learned aboard The Ghost that keep them alive.
For the movie, the producers, Warner Bros., hired Robert Rossen to write the screenplay. Rossen re-wrote the story, keeping Larsen and van Weyden pretty much as they are in the book, but re-imagining one of the shipmates into a major character, Leach (John Garfield), and changing the one female in the story, Ruth Brewster (ida Lupino), into a wanted criminal. Instead of van Weyden falling for the girl, Rossen has Leach become her soul mate.
Strangers On a Train is one of the best Hitchcock movies - and best movies - ever made.
The plot is super simple: two men meet by accident on a train. Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is a famous tennis player and is recognized by Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), a aging ne'er do well. Bruno tells Guy about his father who is always complaining about the money that Bruno spends. Bruno reads the gossip columns so he knows that Guy wants to marry a Senator's daughter but his cheating wife won't give him a divorce. Bruno suggests that they 'swap' murders. That way, the police will never figure it out because there will be no motive.
Unbeknownst to Guy, Bruno thinks they have made a deal and kills Guy's wife. The scene in which he strangles her as seen through her broken eyeglasses which have fallen to the ground is every bit as chilling as a certain shower scene Hitchcock shot about a decade later.
Bruno then goes to Guy and expects him to reciprocate. Robert Walker should have won an Oscar just for the way he said, "Guy" as he calls on Haines so that he could give Guy the keys to his father's house and details on where his father's bedroom is.
When it becomes clear that Guy does not intend to murder Bruno's father, Bruno decides to plant a cigarette lighter that belongs to Guy at the murder scene of Guy's wife, framing Guy for the murder.
The cast is top notch from the two leads down to the two detectives (Robert Gist and John Douchette) who are tailing Haines to try to pin his wife's murder on him. The music by Dimitri Tiomkin is perfect.
But the BIG story of Strangers is that the screenplay is by Raymond Chandler, among others. There are many elements of Chandler's best work in this screenplay. The story is told almost exclusively from Haines' perspective, just as Chandler's Marlowe books are. His first screenplay was a gem, Double Indemnity. He did not like working for Hollywood because, as is still the case, the writer is just an employee of the studio and the studio or director or even the actor can make changes to the script. Chandler did not like anyone changing even a comma - so there were lots of conflicts. And there were also a few of the best film noir films ever made.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Ten Commandments or Put Through Demille Again
The Ten Commandments is to movies like those paintings of dogs playing cards is to art - I mean, how do those dogs do it? And that is what we all ask whenever we see this movie: how did they do it?
Watching TTC at the Grauman Chinese Theater, on a big screen and with a few hundred other people, the special effects are really special, especially since this was all done 60+ years ago without any CGI. Yes, as one critic said 60+ years ago in his review of this movie, we are put through DeMille again, but oh what a DeMille!
Craig Barron, a visual effects Oscar winner and Ben Burtt, a sound effects Oscar winner, introduced the movie at the TCM 2018 Festival. They brought along some video to explain how DeMille and his team did it - from Pillars of Fire to the parting of the Red Sea. They emphasized that most of the special effects were done in layers, that is, there was more than one element of special effects involved in each special effects scene. For example, the parting of the Red Sea involved a triple matte plus three dimensional sets and special sounds. Even less gaudy effects were multidimensional. When Moses and his wife to be are at the base of Mount Sinai, the Mount is a matte scene but to add depth to it, the smoke surrounding the peak was real, made by special smoke machines.
Just as the special effects have taken prominence in this review, so too in the movie. None of the characters is especially intriguing: Charlton Heston (Moses) is just your ordinary born-Jewish-but-left-in-a-basket-in-the-Nile River- to-be-found-by-Pharaoh's daughter-and-made-into-a-prince-of-Egypt. Yul Brynner (Rameses) is the put-out-actual-son-of Pharaoh-who-hates-his-pseudo-half-brother. Anne Baxter (Nefertiti) is the woman -in-the -middle.
I expect that it is difficult to act in a movie that is almost 4 hours long and you are expected to bring to life a story that is more than 3,000 years old. All those special effects making it vital that the actual human beings on the set perform their parts as well as can be expected while on the clock so to speak - these effects are intricately timed. Every. Word. Spoken. In. This. Movie. Is. Spoken. LIke. There. Is. A. Period. After. Each. Word. Really. Only Brynner is able to stitch together a character from these shopworn cliche-spouting metronomes passing for people.
As the plagues of god pile up, we are told that the Hebrew exodus from Egypt was the first birth of Freedom in the world. It seems Freedom needed a lot of help to get started and still needs help to get it over the twin humps of Facebook and Amazon - we know what you watch, what you think, what you talk to other people about, who your friends are, what you read and listen to, where you shop and what you buy, where you live, eat and sleep. Where's your messiah now?
I, Tonya (Directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Steven Rogers) is a ground-breaking new film about the unstated class system in America.
I, Tonya is that rare movie that puts you, the audience, into the center of what the movie is about.
I, Tonya tells the story of what really happened when a world-class ice skater from the wrong side of the tracks had her main rival whacked, literally.
I, Tonya tries to do for film what Picasso did for art and William Faulkner did for the novel – to capture reality from more than one side, one point of view.
OK, this movie works on so many levels, every time I started to write this review, I kept changing it. So I decided to use all of them because that is what this movie is about: reality in all of its many dimensions.
The story is simple and one that many of you will remember. Tonya Harding (Margo Robbie) was a great American ice skating champion who was the first woman to do a triple axel (three and a half rotations) during a competition. Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver) was a great American ice skating champion and in direct competition with Harding for the Ice Skating Champion of the 1994 Olympics. One day, coming from practice, Kerrigan is whacked in the knee by an unknown assailant.
What is not so simple is the world that Harding came from. Her mother (Allison Janney) is one of the great Dearest Mommy mothers ever portrayed in film. And she even hits Nancy with a hair brush. The more success Nancy has, the more her mother insists that it is because she pushed and slammed and even knifed Nancy to be the best.
When Nancy meets Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), she is only 15 years old, but she desperately needs someone to love her and Jeff is it. Sadly, he, too, cannot keep his slaps and punches to himself and worse, he is not too bright. When Nancy tells her mother that she and Jeff are going to be married, her mother advises, “You fuck dumb, you don’t marry dumb.”
Jeff has a friend who is even dumber than he is, Sean (Paul Walter Hauser). When Nancy gets a death threat just before the American championships, Sean suggests that they get back at Tonya’s biggest competitor, Nancy Kerrigan, by doing the same to her. From such stupid, small ideas comes a scandal that made tabloid news seep into mainstream news so that today, one cannot tell one from the other. In 1994, Tonya became the second most recognized person in the world behind President Bill Clinton.
The story is told by the major characters in interview format that is interspliced with action scenes of what is being described. Director Gillespie keeps switching the format so that we are constantly being thrown from one person’s reality to another’s. By the time we get to ‘the incident’ (and Harding tells us, OK, that is what you are all here for), we are not certain who to believe and what really happened. What we are certain about is our complicity in the circus that surrounded the tragedy of Harding’s life. As she tells us, she was abused all of her life and (looking straight into the camera) “lastly by you.”
The acting is some of the best you will see this year. Robbie is incredible. The makeup, the spectacular skating of Harding and, especially, the parental and spousal violence are so real that they make us understand more than ever that the movies are now at a stage where they can create reality, any reality, that they want to create. What is real becomes just as nebulous as what is true.
I, Tonya is about class, both as in classy and as in class status. Harding was from the wrong side of the tracks and her ‘class’ is not something she could hide any more than she could hide her ambition. As she continues to be the best female ice skater in America, but is never named the best by judges for the American Ice Skating Association, her frustration mounts until she finally confronts a judge in a parking lot who is visibly scared of her. He admits that her mediocre scores have nothing to do with her skating but rather they are because the Association does not want her to be the face of American Ice Skating.
In the irony to end all ironies, that is exactly what Tonya Harding becomes.
I, Tonya
Director: Craig Gillespie
Writer: Steven Rogers
Stars: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney
TULLY, A MOVIE ABOUT BEING A MOM
No, this is not Sully, the movie about the pilot who landed the jet on the Hudson River. And after seeing the movie, I can tell you that they could have called this movie a lot of other things, so why they insisted on calling it Tully is not something you will find out in this review, although the name does have some significance to the movie, but if I told you what that is, it would be a spoiler.
Tully had its Hollywood premiere on April 18 in Los Angeles at the Regal Theatre. Written by Diablo Cody (Juno), directed by Jason Reitman (Juno) and starring Charlize Theron, Tully is the story of a woman, Marlo, who has just given birth to her third child, Mia, while trying to keep a semblance of the person she was for most of her life, a beautiful, funny and fun-seeking girl.
Something happened to Marlo after her second child, Jason, who developed or was born with serious mental problems. Marlo had depression after his birth and neither of them has fully recovered.
Marlo if is fed up. Her body is this machine that needs constant care just to keep working, ballooning up 50 pounds with another person inside it, then becoming a milk factory to feed and care for this crying, lovable, shitty, sucking baby that needs you 24/7. Tully does for motherhood what Saving Private Ryan did for soldiering – it took it out of the dream factory and put it into the real factory where things get down and dirty. It made war real as Tully makes motherhood real. Mothers gain weight while pregnant and most don't lose it. Breast-feeding babies is hard work and often hurts. And no matter how progressive we think our times are, women still have most of the household duties, including caring for the kids. When Marlo goes off for a night on the town, her husband instinctively says that she has never left the kids alone like that before. When he is reminded that he was home with them, he responds, 'oh, yeah, right.'
Her husband, Drew (in a fine performance by Ron Livingston), tries to help, but he has a job and spends all of his spare time fantasizing he is in charge as he zaps bad guys in video games. Her brother (Mark Duplass) has hit the jackpot in America, having the right job at the right time that makes him rich. As a present, he offers her a 'night nanny,' a caretaker who comes over at night to allow a mother to get some rest.
Enter "Tully", a 26-year-old stand in for Diablo Cody – she's smart, funny, caring, understanding, quirky – you saw Juno, right? Tully is Marlo's Savior (yes, capitol S because that is what she really is, grace from God). Tully takes over and suddenly, everything goes right for Marlo. She is once again becoming the woman who started this journey three kids, fifty pounds and one nervous breakdown ago. Tully is cleaning the house, making cupcakes for the kids to take to school and even joining Marlo in bed to help revive her husband's fast fading attraction for her. Wait, wait – she what? Yep, she does. Or maybe...
It all comes to a head when that night on the town with Tully turns into a near death experience. There is an accident and Marlo is almost killed. It is at this moment that the movie loses its way and decides to put on a glitzy sequined sexy gown to cover its gritty but honest overalls. Everything that happened to Marlo for the several weeks that this movie shows of her life is reduced to one shamefully lurid fact.
Of course, the movie probably got made because of that last-minute turn-around. It’s the kind of thing that has made huge hits of other, rather mundane and much less deserving movies. In fact, you can almost say that Tully has stolen an idea from a very successful movie of yesteryear. But hey, who remembers yesterday let alone yesteryear?
Go see Tully. It's 90 minutes of great acting, fine directing, good writing – and 4 minutes of thinking - oh no, I wish they had just let this movie be what it is, a fine movie about what it takes to be a mom. It’s a really good movie - until it isn’t.
And they should have waited to release it on – that's right, Mother's Day.
Running time: 94 MIN.
PRODUCTION: A Focus Features release of a Bron Studios, Right of Way Films, Denver and Delilah Productions prod. Producers: Diablo Cody, A.J. Dix, Helen Estabrook, Aaron L. Gilbert, Beth Kono, Mason Novick, Jason Reitman, Charlize Theron. Executive producers: Jason Blumenfeld, Jason Cloth, David Gendron, Ali Jazayeri, Ron McLeod, Andrew Pollack, Paul Tennyson, Stan Thomas, Dale Wells.
CREW: Director: Jason Reitman. Screenplay: Diablo Cody. Camera (color, widescreen): Eric Steelberg. Editors: Stefan Grube.
WITH: Charlize Theron, Mackenzie Davis, Mark Duplass, Ron Livingston, Emily Haine, Elaine Tan.
The story Martin Scorsese tells in The Wolf of Wall Street is classic Americana: a social climber, Jordan Belfort, strikes it rich by taking H. L. Mencken’s advice, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
Belfort gets rich by selling penny stocks to people who don’t know any better, then gets ever richer by selling them to people who should know better, but as they say on Wall Street, "You can't make money investing in what you should."
And making money is the name of the game and it's the only game ion town. Here's to you, unscrupulous scumbags!
Wolf is all about excess. Cocaine by the pound snorted, quaaludes by the carton popped, prostitutes by the score banged, Cristal by the case spilled, money in the millions squandered, and scenes of indescribable decadence are all part of the Scorsese palate in creating Wolf. And it’s almost three hours long.
Shortly after it was released, the daughter of one of the con men depicted in the movie wrote an open letter to Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, telling them what scum they are for making a movie that praises the lifestyle of people who have destroyed lives with no more thought than killing a bug. She tells them that she is officially turning over to them the shame she has felt for years at being this guy’s daughter.
Actually Scorsese and his writer, Terence Winter, just depict — and not necessarily praise — the lives of these lowlifes; but showing lowlifes getting extremely rich while defrauding people and living the life of the rich and fatuous is as close to praise as you can get in this country.
Who's the hero?
The problem of portraying evil without making it look appealing dates back to the the birth of western literature. No less a writer than John Milton struggled with the problem in his magnum opus, Paradise Lost. All the critics agree that the most interesting character in Milton’s tale of good versus evil is, well, evil, as personified by the mother of all evildoers, the devil himself, Lucifer. Everybody prefers Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll.
The history of the movies is studded with blockbuster hits about bad guys whose lives are full of violence, greed, addiction, and that fourth horseman of modern depravity, casual sex. The problem is that from Valentino’s Sheik — he kidnaps the woman he wants — to Jordan Belfort, movies make heroes of the bad guys they portray.
And no matter how hard a filmmaker tries to show us how bad a guy is, audiences love them.
Take The Godfather. Francis Ford Coppola shows the transformation of Michael Corleone from a WWII hero who wants nothing to do with the family business of crime and punishment to the most ruthless mafia don in America. I saw the movie shortly after it came out at the long-gone Fox movie palace on 16th and Market in Philadelphia. The culminating scene in the movie is a now-classic montage: Michael acts as the godfather to his nephew (whose father he soon will have garroted), renouncing the devil. This scene is cut together with scenes where Michael’s henchmen murder his rivals. As each mafia don was brutally wiped out, a cheer went up in the theater. The audience was applauding Michael’s bloody triumph.
Why, I wondered, was everyone applauding this murdering conniver?
The answer is simple — people love to watch bad guys be bad. Maybe it’s because it provides an easy answer to why so many of us perceive our own lives as failed. If I had been willing to [murder, cheat, betray, steal], I would be rich and successful too. Of course, in the old Hollywood, all these bad guys ended up like their template, Lucifer, in hell. But finally Hollywood came to the conclusion that the American people can take the truth: greed is good.
What sets Wolf apart from the other classics that celebrate the bullies is the fact that Wolf is not a very good movie. For three hours, we watch a super-salesman hump, snort, cheat, hustle, and deceive his way to the top of the FBI Wall Street hit list. (By the way, the FBI’s history of prosecuting Wall Street elites proves that its Wall Street hit list is a very short list, and you have to be really, really bad to get on it). In the end, the Wolf loses all the money he stole from others and ends up selling himself as a self-help guru. As the daughter who turned over her shame says, these guys always land on their feet.
Where do you draw the line?
So is a filmmaker or writer or artist promoting the evil he or she portrays?
Not necessarily, but how much sex do you need to show before you fall into the porno well? Is it just the fact that you’re not showing the actor’s penis that makes such depictions art and not porn? There is such a thing as violence porn. How about financial porn? In Wolf, greed is not only good, it’s the reason for living.
So what is Scorsese trying to tell us? Our country has gone berserk by letting guys like this get away with financial butchery? Is this an “only in America” tale? Maybe. If so, Wolf fails because the idea that this movie is an indictment of the system is nowhere to be found in the movie itself. In the end, we have one more movie that is about all that the people who made it claim to hate.
At least at the end of The Godfather Michael is forced to lie to the one person in the world he loves, his wife. And by doing that, he destroys the one thing he claims to care about, his family. Jordan Belfort cares about no one and nothing. Even when he loses his family, his friends, and his money, he couldn’t care less.
Frankly, neither could I.
AFI DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL JUNE 17-21
MIRACLE FISHING
What is a documentary film?
It's a film with and about real people in real human situations. Often we forget this because many of the documentary films we watch are of the Ken Burns variety, that is, a film that uses old photos or film to tell a story from history, such as Burns' classic The Civil War. But most documentary films are not like that.
The variety and depth of documentary film making is apparent when you look at the schedule of films to be shown, online, at the AFI Documentary Film Festival, the premier documentary film festival in the US.
Of special interest is a program about Lee Grant who is known, primarily, as a brilliant actress with a Best Supporting Oscar win for Shampoo. One of the joys of re-watching In The Heat of the Night is her small, but brilliant performance as the widow of a slain northern businessman in a southern city. When Det. Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) tells her of her husband's murder, Grant gives a two minute course in acting.
Less well known is her career as an Oscar winning documentary filmmaker for her HBO film DOWN AND OUT IN AMERICA. Grant will be featured in an in-depth conversation moderated by Washington Post Chief Film Critic Ann Hornaday as she recalls her years as a documentarian and the forces that drove her to take up this second – but never secondary – career.
I had the opportunity to watch one of the films which will be shown at this year's Festival, Miracle Fishing Unlike most documentaries, MIRACLE FISHING was shot more than 25 years ago. It tells the story of the Hargrove family. Father, Tom Hargrove, and mother, Susan Hargrove led an unusual life. As a child, she roamed the world with her family and when she met Tom he fell in love with her and wanted to live the life that she had lived since childhood, roaming the world.
Tom was an agriculture scientist and journalist and for almost 20 years Susan and he with their two sons lived in the Philippines. In 1991, Hargrove began working for the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), a non-profit company in Cali, Colombia. On September 23, 1994, he was kidnapped by FARC guerrillas. FARC was the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or People's Army. It was a Marxist guerrilla group that financed itself through kidnapping, bank robberies and, eventually, drug trading.
At that time in Colombia there were many hundreds of kidnappings every year. A cottage industry grew up around these kidnappings of companies and individuals who would offer themselves as 'kidnapping experts.' When Hargrove was kidnapped, his family had no idea what to do. Very quickly, Hargrove's employer decided that it would not negotiate for his release, and, so, it was left to his family to try to arrange for his release.
Miles Hargrove, one of their sons, was always interested in film and carried his camera with him, filming his family, often to their annoyance. When his father was kidnapped, he decided to film the incredible experience his family was going through.
The kidnap of Tom Hargrove was different than the kidnappings which occur in the US. Most kidnappers have just as much interest in concluding the negotiation and returning the victim as the victim's family and friends have. The longer a kidnapper must keep a victim in hiding, the more likely it is that the kidnappers will be caught. With FARC, the situation was different. FARC was an organized military group hiding in the mountains. It had no incentive to end a kidnapping quickly - in fact, it had just the opposite motivation, that is, to milk the victim's family or employer for all it could get.
FARC's initial demand was $6 million. The Hargroves countered with $42,000. To say the least, they were light years apart. And that is the kernel of this film, the long negotiation to try and free their father.
Along the way, we see how people deal with a crisis that is truly existential - literally it is life or death for Tom Hargrove. While the entire film is shot by a then amateur filmmaker, Miles Hargrove, and most of the people are shown in the midst of their worst nightmare, the humanity of all involved shines through. At one point Susan reflects that their life has come to mirror the movie, Groundhog Day because every day is a little different, but they always wake up to the same world - Tom is kidnapped and how are they going to get him back?
Miracle Fishing is the kind of film that gets the viewer involved. You feel every disappointment and you suffer through every mishap. The ingredients of great drama are all there - people you identify with, danger that is all too real, the fairy tale life of this ex-pat family (pre-kidnapping), the exotic nature of where they lived, the drama of how the kidnapping enfolds and the compassion of their friends and neighbors in helping this family under siege. Ultimately, the best documentaries are just like the best fictional movies, only more so.
Country: USA Year: 2020
Directors: Miles Hargrove, (Co-director: Christopher Birge)
Screenwriters: Miles Hargrove, Christopher Birge, Eric F. Martin
Producers: Miles Hargrove, Christopher Birge, Eric F. Martin
Running Time: 104 MIN
Fredric March
I have been a fan of his since I first saw him in an early Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (he won one of his Oscars for this role) on the Late Late Show. Over the years, March could be depended on to find something human, something very personal in whatever character he was playing. One of my favorites is his portrayal of a returning GI in William Wyler's The Best Years of our Lives. March returns to his life as a banker but cannot shake the changes he went through as a Master Sergeant in the Pacific War. In every scene he is in, March tells us the story of this returning Ulysses who must now go back to the work of caring for a family and taking his place in society. Fighting for freedom was more dangerous in the Pacific, but fighting the good fight at home will be more difficult.
Here are movies I recommend you try this month on TCM:
3/1 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY You have to try and go back to when this movie was released in 1968 to get an understanding how much this movie changed the way we look at science fiction - and movies. This is one you have to see.
3/2 THE LAST PICTURE SHOW Peter Bogdanovich was supposed to be the next great director and this movie gives you the reason we all thought that in 1971. Great performances by Jeff Bridges, Cybil Shepard, Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman.
3/3 THE HEIRESS William Wyler was a magician and here he gets us to believe that Olivia De Havilland is an unattractive heiress dominated by her father, Ralph Richardson, in Richardson's best screen performance.
3/4 THE SET-UP Robert Ryan plays an all too honest fighter in this early Robert Wise classic.
3/5 MY FAIR LADY Audrey Hepburn gives a great performance (with Marni Nixon's singing voice) but was denied an Oscar nomination because Hollywood hated that Warner Bros. didn't cast the actress who made theatrical history when she starred in the role on B'way, Julie Andrews.
3/6 NORTHWEST PASSAGE I first saw this tale of Spencer Tracy exploring the American wilderness in the early 19th century in college in a film course and it has stayed with me.
3/7 ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN Two neophyte reporters bring down a President. It's a fairy tale that happened to be true.
3/8 THE CINCINNATI KID There are movies that are so good but never seem to make it into those lists of great movies - this is one. Watch and you'll see what I mean.
3/9 D.O.A. A guy shows up at the police station and says he wants to report a murder. Of who?, he is asked. Of me, he says.
3/10 LOOK BACK IN ANGER John Osborne wrote this play that was unlike any play written before - kind of Rebel Without a Cause meets The Glass Menagerie. Richard Burton shows why he was Richard Burton.
3/11 MADAME BOVARY Vincente Minnelli's movie of the classic novel with Jennifer Jones giving her best performance.
3/12 THE MALTESE FALCON Before Bogie and Huston, others tried to make a movie of this seminal P.I. novel but it never worked until Huston decided to film the book without changes.
3/13 HAWAII In 1966, this is how Hollywood made 'blockbusters' whether the public liked it or not. An all-star cast headed by the hottest actress on the planet (at the time), Julie Andrews, and based on a best-seller novel. It couldn't miss, right?
3/14 THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS There are few movies that can touch this one for a hard look at America, the media and celebrity. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis give memorable performances - hey, don't miss this one!
3/15 WHAT'S UP DOC So after he made The Last Picture Show, Bogdanovich decided to make a screwball comedy. Barbra Streisand wanted to stop making musicals so she teams up with Ryan O'Neill and they have a blast - you will too.
3/16 RYAN'S DAUGHTER David Lean had made several great movies in a row before he lost his mind and decided to cast Robert Mitchum as the cuckold in a story about the Irish troubles and love. It's better than you would think.
3/17 THE RISING OF THE MOON John Ford returns to Ireland to do this story about Irish people living under British rule starring Tyrone Power who is much better than he is given credit for.
3/18 ROYAL WEDDING TCM has a day long tribute to the late Stanley Donen and this is part of it - Fred Astaire and Jane Powell play a brother/sister hit act, much like Fred and his sister were on B'way in the 1920's and just like his sister, Jane wants to quit the act to marry a British nobleman. Great Lerner-Lowe score.
3/19 A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER Being an E.G. Robinson fan, I caught this one night on the Late Late Show - and lo and behold, it's a comedy! A very funny one to boot.
3/20 SOME CAME RUNNING Sinatra, Dino and an incredible performance by Shirley MacLaine make this Vincente Minnelli directed movie shine.
3/21 NETWORK Saw this when it opened and I left the theater speechless - now this is a movie!
3/22 NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH Early Carol Reed spy thriller that is a warm-up to his classic, The Third Man.
3/23 PRISONER OF ZENDA This is the one with Stewart Granger in the lead but James Mason steals the movie playing a dastardly rogue.
3/24 ODD MAN OUT Carol Reed again, and James Mason too and Ireland during the troubles, one more time..
3/25 GREAT EXPECTATIONS David Lean made his reputation making these great post-WWII movies about dear old England.
3/26 THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT From a Paddy Chayefsky play about an older man Fredrick March falling for a younger woman Kim Novak.
3/27 KING RAT WWII Japanese prisoner camp story that made a star of George Segal.
3/28 AUNTIE MAME Rosalind Russell plays the lead in a warm up to her Mama Rose performance in Gypsy.
3/29 DIAL M FOR MURDER Hitchcock's movie about an ex-tennis pro (Ray Milland) who wants to murder his wealthy wife (Grace Kelly) - and he is such a great director that you buy that premise.
3/30 LARCENY, INC Another EG Robinson comedy, this one finds him buying a luggage store so he can break into the bank next door. Problems arise when the store becomes a hit.
3/31 THE LAST HURRAH Spencer Tracy as an old time Irish Mayor fighting to get re-elected in the era of TV and money.
FEBRUARY ON TCM
This month starts the 31 Days of Oscar on TCM so each day has a different theme and will feature movies that have won an Oscar. So, February 1 starts with Literary Adaptations into movies and also features Janet Gaynor's Oscar win for multiple movies - Sunrise and Street Angel.
Here are my pics for a short month of great movies to enjoy on TV's best movie channel:
2/1 THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER Based on the Carson McCuller novel, this gem stars Alan Arkin as a deaf-mute who tries to find his way in an indifferent world. Do yourself a favor and watch this movie.
2/2 STRANGERS ON A TRAIN Hitchcock at his best. Two men meet by chance on a train and one has an ingenuous scheme to solve each's problems - crisscross: you kill the person I want to get rid of and I'll do the same for you.
2/3 FUNNY GIRL Barbra Streisand's debut as Fanny Brice, directed by William Wyler (his only musical) with a great score and cast.
2/4 THE CHILDREN'S HOUR Another Wyler gem, based on Lillian Hellman's play (Wyler also directed her Little Foxes in 1941). Not as well known as it should be, this features remarkable performances by Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine - yes, she can act with the best of them.
2/5 I VITELLONI Early Fellini flick about bored young men in a boring little town - hey, somehow Fellini makes you care and laugh - yes, laugh.
2/6 THE LONGEST DAY Legendary producer Darryl Zanuck made this episodic movie about the invasion of France by the Allies. Great cast - watch for a chilling performance by Richard Burton.
2/7 CAGED Eleanor Parker stars as innocent who gets sent to prison and comes out a hardened gangster's moll.
2/8 THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! One of the funniest films ever made with an incredible performance by Alan Arkin as a Russian sailor trying to find a boat to tow his submarine off a shoal in New England.
2/9 IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT From the opening credits with Ray Charles singing the title song while the camera pans over workers in a cotton field, you know this movie is different. Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger are the unlikeliest buddys in this classic take on that genre.
2/10 A PASSAGE TO INDIA David Lean's last and one of his greatest movies. I had read the E.M. Forster novel and when I heard that it was to be made into a movie, I thought it couldn't be done - the novel is too subtle, to complex. I was wrong.
2/11 MY FAVORITE YEAR Story of the high jinks in early TV will leave you rolling on the floor.
2/12 TO BE OR NOT TO BE This is the original and you will discover what is meant by the Lubitsch touch. Just perfect.
2/13 THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI David Lean visits a Japanese slave labor camp for prisoners in WWII. Sessue Hayakawa is incredible as the conflicted Colonel in charge of the camp.
2/14 FATHER OF THE BRIDE Vincente Minnelli's gem about the joys and sorrows of being the guy stuck with the tab. Tracey, Taylor and a great su[[orting cast.
2/15 THE BAD SEED If you think that you were a bad kid, take a look and see what a really bad kid looks like.
2/16 THE GREAT RACE For unknown reasons, this delightful farce has never found an audience, but let's change that. Blake Edwards directs a great cast: Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk (yes, another movie in which Falk steals every scene he is in)
2/17 NETWORK They made a play out of this iconic Paddy Chayefsky but nothing can match the movie for sheer chutzpah. Among all the great performances, William Holden's can get lost, but he is the key to the movie.
2/18 HIGH NOON The 'politicians' have let out of jail the notorious killer, Frank Miller who has sworn vengeance on those who put him in jail. Sheriff Gary Cooper is just about to leave town on his wedding day (with Grace Kelly) when he is forced to stay and fight - alone. This movie touches on so many American myths that it could be called, High Icon.
2/19 CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS This is the kind of gem the studios use to produce. Not a great movie, but a very good one with entertainment to keep you stuck to your seat - and oh yea, Spencer Tracy as a Portuguese fisherman.
2/20 THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY A variation on the 'disaster' flicks, this time a plane full of people who are some of the best character actors in Hollywood. John Wayne toughs it out while whistling a great Dimitri Tiomkin score.
2/21 LA STRADA Fellini brings to life a traveling circus act with Tony Quinn and the strong mans and Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina, as his much abused assistant. This is the movie that made everyone sit up and watch Fellini.
2/23 BORN FREE Africa in the 60s where a married couple run a farm and adopt a baby cub lion. When the lion grows up, there's a problem. This a delightful movie that you can share with your children.
2/24 A HARD DAY'S NIGHT The Beatles make their first movie under the direction of Richard Lester. The lads play themselves and along the way are all these great songs. The title song, penned by John, who got the idea when the lads were leaving Abbey Road after a long recording session and, as Ringo was walking out the door, he said, "It's been a hard day - (then seeing it was nighttime) night."
2/25 IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT This is the first movie to win all big-4 Oscars, Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Actress (Claudette Colbert), Best director (Frank Capra) and Best Picture. As opposed to many head-scratching choices made by the Academy over the years, these Oscars were well deserved.
2/26 ANASTASIA When the Czar and his family were killed by the Bolsheviks, the youngest daughter survived and went into hiding (look, it's a movie so forget the facts). Ingrid Bergman makes her grand comeback, winning her second Oscar. Yul Brynner and Akim Tamiroff do their usual outstanding job.
2/27 JOHNNY EAGER Robert Taylor was tired of playing the pretty boy and he gets to play the heel in this crime thriller beside Lana Turner and Van Heflin (who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his let it all hand out performance).
2/28 THE GREAT WHITE HOPE This is the movie that made James Earl Jones a star, playing the first Black heavyweight fighter, Jack Johnson (they change his name to Jefferson, I assume to claim it's all made up). Jane Alexander plays Jones' white mistress in the early 20th century when interracial marriage was forbidden by law.
DECEMBER 2018 ON TCM
"Tis the season to be jolly!
But on TCM, in December, you can watch everything from the the sorrow of a war-displaced mother and daughter in Italy (Two Women) to the tuneful Irving Berlin classic, Holiday Inn.
Here are my takes on a month of classic flicks that will bring all the laughter and tears that movies have to give to you on your own TV:
12/1 Crack-Up - for those of you who thought that Pat O'Brien was just decoration for all those Irish-themed movies, here he is in an real Hitchcockian thriller with an excellent supporting cast.
12/2 The Shop Around the Corner - Jimmy Stewart is as good as he gets in this touching Xmas story about the owners and workers in a gift shop. Do yourself a favor, watch this movie. I guarantee it will become one of your favorites.
12/3 King Solomon's Mines - Before there was Indiana Jones, there was Allan Quatermain.
12/4 Norma Rae - with her bio recently released, Sally Fields is in the news - and she shines in this rare Hollywood movie about a female worker trying to make a better life for herself and her family.
12/5 Two Women - Sophia Loren won an Oscar for a displaced mother during WWII trying to keep her daughter safe.
12/6 A Midsummers Night's Dream - watch the stars of old Hollywood make Shakespeare come alive in this magical movie.
12/7 The Graduate - this is the movie that made a star of Dustin Hoffman. I will say one word about it - plastics.
12/8 Meet John Doe - a fired feature writer (Barbara Stanwyck) concocts a story about a homeless man (Gary Cooper) who is going to kill himself on Christmas, and gets her job back.
12/9 O. Henry's Full House - there was a time when Hollywood put out several movies that were 4 or 5 short films in one. This is one of the best, narrated by John Steinbeck. Chock full of stars from Marilyn Monroe to Charles Laughton.
12/10 Paths of Glory - this early Kubrick WWI tale stars Kirk Douglas, Adolph Menjou and incredible performance by the underrated George Macready.
12/11 Stagecoach - John Ford's masterpiece about the West. John Wayne and Monument Valley became staple stars of Westerns after this movie.
12/12 Jailhouse Rock - ok, so it's not Singing In The Rain. It is one of The King's best.
12/13 Page Miss Glory - a screwball comedy that delivers.
12/14 To Sir, With Love - somebody decided to cast Sidney Poitier as a teacher in a lower class London school where he teaches the kids how to grow up - and it works. Lulu's debut.
12/15 The Naked and the Dead - making great novels into movies is not easy, and this one shows why. Still, there is just enough of the fire of the book to keep us watching.
12/16 Children of Paradise - French film about love, life and the theatre.
12/17 Rififi - this is the daddy of all caper flicks, and it's French to boot.
12/18 The Absent Minded Professor - Fred MacMurray does his Disney thing.
12/19 Oliver Twist - David Lean adapted Dickens' classic story of a boy who gets taken in by a gang of child thieves.
12/20 Anna and the King of Siam - the non-musical version of the King and I starring Rex Harrison as the King of Siam. Hey, this was Hollywood in the 1950s where the Jewish-born Ira Grossel (known to us as Jeff Chandler) could get nominated for an Oscar for playing Cochise.
12/21 The Way We Were - Barbra's best acting role. Robert Redford had to be talked into playing the iconic Hubbell by director Sydney Pollock.
12/22 Ben Hur - saw this for the first time in a great, classic movie palace in Philadelphia, The Boyd. Sadly, along with about a dozen other movie palaces in the City Developers Love, The Boyd was demolished. But we still have Ben Hur with a much underrated performance by Stephen Boyd.
12/23 Holiday Inn - Irving Berlin's score introduced the world to Happy Holidays, Easter Parade and White Christmas. The later two songs were so popular, they were the titles of two other movies about the holidays.
12/24 In The Good Old Summertime - this is the musical version of The Shop Around the Corner with Judy Garland.
12/25 Lover Come Back - Doris Day is not everyone's dish, but she will make a believer out of you in this sophisticated comedy with her favorite co-star Rock Hudson.
12/26 Deliverance - if you have a holiday hangover, this is the movie that will snap you out of it.
12/27 Pitfall - did you like Fatal Attraction? Then you will like this film noir look at infidelity.
12/28 A Hard Day's Night - rock groups don't make critically acclaimed movies, except for the Beatles.
12/29 A Tale of Two Cities - this is a great movie from a great novel. Ronald Coleman gives one of the best performances by an actor in a movie. Watching this classic will be a far, far better thing you can do than anything else.
12/30 Love Me or Leave Me - this is Doris Day's best performance as the apple of minor gangster James Cagney's lustful eye. There is a scene at the very end of the movie where she is singing the title tune and he has to decide if he is going to let go of his passion for her - it all happens on his face.
12/31 That's Entertainment - bring in the New Year with some of Hollywood's greatest musical moments.
THIS MONTH ON TCM - SEPTEMBER 2018
A New Feature on itsjustamovie.com
As a movie fan who began to watch old movies on 'UHF' channels when they first appeared on TV, I thought that I would pass along some of the movies I look forward to watching this month on TCM, the new, improved classic movie channel with no commercials - back in the day, UHF was a popular venue for commercials like : 'ALL THE MUSIC YOU LOVE' on 36 albums with your first album FREE then only $12.99 a month plus shipping and handling!
So, here are my picks for what to watch in September on TCM (not necessarily the best movie playing that day, but a great one).
9/10 - D.O.A. - one of the first great noir movies. The versatile Edmund O'Brien plays an accountant who goes on a fatal vacation. If you haven't seen this one, you are in for a treat.
9/11 - Until Dark Wait - Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman who is taught how to cope for herself by Alan Arkin in one of his most memorable roles.
9/12 - A Night at the Opera - The Marx Brothers are in the hands of the MGM artists and turn in their most polished performance. Don't miss the 'sanity clause' bit between Groucho and Chico.
9/13 - Rio Bravo - John Wayne is a local sheriff who has to arrest the most powerful man in the territory's no good brother on murder charges. Dean Martin and the always scene-stealing Walter Brennan are along for the ride.
9/14 - King of Hearts - lunatics escape the asylum during WW I - or have they?
9/15 - The Best Man - Henry Fonda wants to be nominated for President at his party's convention but is being opposed by a loud mouth demagogue. Gore Vidal's script is as biting as it is real and an old timer, Lee Tracy, gives his finest performance.
9/16 - Monkey Business - Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe in a farce about an elixir that makes you a kid again.
9/17 - The Loved One - maybe stranger movies have been made, but few that are funnier. Robert Morse makes his way through Hollywood, one corpse at a time.
9/18 - Out of the Past - a seminal film noir classic with everybody's favorite bad boy - Robert Mitchum and everybody's favorite bad girl, Jane Greer.
9/19 - Oceans 11 - the original. This one has a plot and actually works because the set-up that a bunch of former GIs from the same unit in WWII were never very good at anything on their own, but as a team - robbing the casinos in Vegas is child's play compared to beating the Nazis.
9/20 - The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone - Tennessee Williams script starring Vivien Leigh in one of her final performances and Warren Beatty in one of his first,
9/21 - Dr. Dolittle - Rex Harrison is a doctor who talks to the animals. The music and Samantha Eggar make this movie worth watching.
9/22 - The Professionals - Richard Brooks decided to make a movie for the fun of it and he took along Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Willie Strode, Jack Palance and Ralph Bellamy. Along the way, Brooks picked up 2 Oscar nominations for script and directing and his cinematographer, Conrad Hall, picked up one too.
9/23 - Far From the Madding Crowd - directed by John Schlesinger, adapted from the Thomas Hardy novel by Frederic Raphael and starring Peter Finch, Alan Bates, Terence Stamp and - the reason to watch this slightly overcooked period drama - Julie Christie.
9/24 - The Last Waltz - the Band's final concert as filmed by Martin Scorsese.
9/25 - Pat and Mike - Tracy and Hepburn play a sports agent and the athlete he signs up. They don't make movies like this anymore - just a solid, very good, funny movie.
9/26 - The Silencers - the opening credits featuring a stiptease by Cyd Charisse is the best thing in this movie, but spending 90 minutes or so with Dean Martin is not the worse way to wile away the night.
9/27 - The Little Foxes - Bette Davis plays a southern Gordon Gekko with a husband who has a heart of mush and two brothers who think they should run the show. OK, here it is short and simple - one of the best movies ever made. There.
9/28 - Suspicion - Penniless playboy Cary Grant marries prim heiress Joan Fontaine - for her money? It's Hitchcock so you know you're going to enjoy the ride.
9/29 - The Big Sleep - this original Philip Marlowe adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel by - get this - William Faulkner. Howard Hawks directs.
9/30 - That Hamilton Woman - Vivian Leigh and her then husband Laurence Olivier in the story of a British Naval hero and his mistress during the Napoleonic Wars - it's better than it sounds.
OCTOBER 2018 ON TCM
The star of the month is Rita Hayworth. She was a triple threat - a great beauty who could act, sing and dance. I think that she was Fred Astaire's finest partner after his years with Ginger Rogers.
Take a look at Fred and her doing the Shorty George - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z08FrM6J4hE -
or their impeccable dancing to I'm Old Fashioned - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwmjx8gpzrA.
Here are my daily picks for your watching pleasure this month on TCM:
10/1 - Tunes of Glory - An acting tour de force with Alec Guinness, John Mills and Dennis Price.
10/2 - You Were Never Lovelier - Astaire, Hayworth, Kern - you can't beat that trifecta.
10/3 - The Phantom of the Opera (silent) - Lon Chaney in one of his iconic roles.
10/4 - Dinner at Eight - This was one of the first ALL-STAR CAST movies with many of MGM's great stars in one package. Jean Harlow steals the movie.
10/5 - Night Train - early Carol Reed (The Third Man) thriller with Rex Harrison and Margaret Lockwood.
10/6 - OBJECTIVE, BURMA - Raoul Walsh directs Errol Flynn in an early realistic war pic.
10/7 - A STAR IS BORN - Judy Garland and James Mason in the best dramatic musical written for the screen. The Arlen-Gershwin score, Moss Hart script and George Cukor direction make this a movie that cannot be missed.
10/8 - HIS GIRL FRIDAY - Howard Hawkes took the story of a reporter who is always at war with his editor and made them a divorced couple, Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.
10/9 - THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI - Orson Welles tells a tale of murder and deceit.
10/10 - THE JOURNEY - Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner in a Cold War film with a lot of warmth.
10/11 - TALL STORY - Jane Fonda's debut - she's a college girl with a plan - to hook star basketball player Anthony Perkins. Ray Walston, Anne Jackson and a gang of other great actors make this a gem. Hey, I even like the song.
10/12 - THE CANDIDATE - Robert Redford stars as the clueless candidate in a spot on look at politics in the USA.
10/13 - THE NIGHT DIGGER - Roald Dahl wrote this strange wonderful movie with Patricia Neal.
10/14 - CITY LIGHTS - I know, you don't like silent movies - get over it and watch one of the greatest movies ever made - by Chaplin.
10/15 - THE LADY REFUSES - OK, not a classic but not bad for 1931.
10/16 - PAL JOEY - Sinatra at his best with a great Rodgers & Hart score, Nelson Riddle arrangements and Kim Novak and Rita Hayworth to make it all shine.
10/17 - THE MORE THE MERRIER - Three people share a room and fall in love - just watch it and see.
10/18 - STAGECOACH - 1939 was the year when Hollywood hit all the right notes and this western by John Ford made John Wayne a star and created the western movie template. Even if you don't like westerns, you will like this one. I guarantee it.
10/19 - TIME WITHOUT PITY - Michael Redgrave in one of his usual outstanding performances - and the rest of the cast isn't too shabby either.
10/20 - SLITHER -James Caan and Sally Kellerman top this excellent cast in a caper movie.
10/21 - GYPSY - The grandmommy of all stage door mother movies. Year by year, this movie gets better as audiences get to see other Mama Roses and realize that what Rosalind Russell and company pull off is not as easy as they make it look.
10/22 - SUSPICION - Cary Grant's ne'er do well playboy marries Joan Fontaine's prim General's daughter in this Hitchcock gem about what makes opposites attract - money and murder or love and redemption?
10/23 - SEPARATE TABLES - Wendy Hiller, Burt Lancaster, David Niven (Oscar winner for his role as a troubled ex-colonel) and Rita Hayworth inhabit a dreary small hotel living lives of quiet desperation.
10/24 - THE DAWN PATROL - Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, David Niven, Donald Crisp AND Barry Fitzgerald fight the good fight in this WWII drama.
10/25 - HIGH ANXIETY - Mel Brooks takes over a psychiatric clinic headed by Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman in this hilarious tribute to Hitchcock.
10/26 - KATHARINE HEPBURN: ALL ABOUT ME - If you like or dislike the lady, you will enjoy this rare glimpse at a life lived large.
10/27 - DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE - Victor Fleming directs Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner in this version of the classic tale. Bergman is incredible and does that rarest of rare things - steams the move from Tracy.
10/28 - THE YELLOW ROLLS ROYCE - The plot follows the ups and downs of a - yes, you guessed right. In the mid-1960s, this is what the studios thought would be a hit.
10/29 - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE - OK, you must have heard of this one - but don't let that fool you - Bette Davis is incredible.
10/30 - KING KONG - The original - and it is as strange and alluring as any movie ever made.
10/31 - THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH - Roger Corman at his sleazy best with Vincent Price.
NOVEMBER ON TCM
As the calendar wends its way toward the Holidays, TCM presents a November full of classics, both known and yet to be discovered.
The Star of the Month is Glenda Farrell, one of Warner Brother's wise-cracking dames whose best known role is just that in Frank Capra's Lady for a Day which was remade by Capra three decades later as A Pocketful of Miracles (too bad TCM doesn't run them together). I once heard Capra told the story that Frank Sinatra was supposed to star in Miracles, but bowed out at the last minute, so he was forced to hire Glenn Ford (a star at the time) and as a result of hiring Ford, he had to agree to Hope Lang (Ford's girlfriend) playing Queenie Martin, the role played by Farrell in Lady (where her character was called Missouri Martin).
Here are our daily picks for November on TCM:
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY - If you haven't seen it, see it. Stanley Kubrick's spot-on vision of the future. Almost 50 years later and this movie looks as fresh as the day it was released.
HOME BEFORE DARK - Jean Simmons is one of the finest actresses of her time and this movie shows all her talents, with a rare appearance by Dan O'Herlihy and a surprising solid performance by Rhonda Fleming.
RED RIVER - Howard Hawkes' bovine masterpiece with iconic performances by John Wayne, Montgomery Clift and Walter Brennan. A young John Ireland steals every scene he is in.
THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES - Frank Gilroy's Pulitzer Prize-winning play comes to the screen a little worse for the transition, but worth it to see Patricia Neal at her peak.
LITTLE CAESAR - You've heard about it and its famous last line - Is this the end of Ricco? - now see why all the fuss was made - it's a great picture.
CASABLANCA - I put this on the list because there are some out there who have never actually sat down and watched this classic - one surly, myopic critic called it the best bad movie ever made.
TARAS BULBA - There was a time when this is what passed for a blockbuster movie in the waning days of studio Hollywood (1962). A Star-spangled (Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis) bomb. But a few good moments.
SALOME - Every once in a blue moon, you should force yourself to watch a silent movie. This one is about as crazy a movie as you will ever see.
WATERLOO BRIDGE - Some movies give tearjerkers a bad name and some show that even a tear-jerker in the right hands (Mervyn LeRoy) with the right cast (Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor) can be a fine movie.
THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI - For those who have never seen this, you are in for a treat. And please don't think this is 'just an adventure or war movie.' It is a classic, in part, because the most sympathetic character in the movie is the enemy - Japanese Colonel Saito played by Sessue Hayakawa.
BREAKING AWAY - This movie is about as far away from Kwai as a movie can get - it's about a mid-western kid's yearning to be a great cyclist.
JOHNNY EAGER - Robert Taylor as a gangster who falls for the DA's daughter - better than it sounds.
MARTY - In the Hollywood of the 1950s, this movie stuck out like a brown suit in a wedding party. Take a look at how a low-budget look at low middle-class living won the Oscar amidst a swirl of Tecnicolor extravaganzas.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS - With Laurence Olivier wooing and losing then winning and losing Merle Oberon in the wilds of Bronte-land, filmed by Gregg Toland for William Wyler, Luca Brasi would shed a tear.
JOURNEY TO ITALY - Rossellini directs Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders in a tale of a marriage on the Italian rocks.
THE BLUE ANGEL - This is the movie that made Marlene Dietrich a star. She plays a vixen who ensnares a much older teacher played by Emil Jannings. Before Muni, Tracey, Brando, there was Jannings.
GANDHI - Ben Kingsley is one of the world's greatest actors and this is the movie that put him on the map.
AMERICA, AMERICA - Elia Kazan makes a movie about how an immigrant finds a way to get to America.
THREE ON A MATCH - In the early 1930s, Hollywood was free to make the kind of movie that told a realistic story in a daring and inventive way - before the self-imposed Code destroyed any chance of doing that for 40 years. This is an example of the Hollywood that could have been.
BROADWAY DANNY ROSE - a small-time agent can't let go of his stable of losers, until one day, one of his misfits suddenly fits. Mia Farrow's best performance.
THE GREAT MCGINTY - Preston Sturges is not a household name, but he is the Mark Twain of movies. His tale of a homeless man who fights his way to the Governor's office is priceless and the funniest movie ever made about politics in the USA. Akim Tamiroff should have won an Oscar.
MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE - If you ever doubted that Cary Grant is one of the greatest actors ever, watch this comedy about building a house.
GUNGA DIN - A close friend of mine saw this when it was released and he was just a child. That friend always talked about it in reverential tones. You will too.
THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY - Michael Crichton's greatest movie from his own novel. This movie is one helluva ride.
SOME LIKE IT HOT - Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in drag. Marilyn Monroe at her best (all those directors and actors who claim that she was a pain in the neck, well, they should be so lucky as to find another pain in the neck like her to be in their movie). Billy Wilder making a movie only he could have concocted.
LADY FOR A DAY - A take on Pygmalion, directed by Frank Capra, written by Robert Riskin from a Damon Runyon short story, this is one of the best pre-code movies.
THE LAST PICTURE SHOW - My brother, Robert, claims that the 1970s was the best decade for movies. That's a period. This movie proves his point. Peter Bogdanovich poured all he knew about making movies into this look at a Texas small town about to be buried in its past. Yet, because of all the great movies of the 70s, this one sometimes gets lost in the shuffle.
THE OUTLAW - When Howard Hughes produced this 24-carat piece of schlock, he used all of his many skills, especially in PR, to make it a hit. Jane Russell was never bigger. Take a look at a piece of history.
12 ANGRY MEN - Used in law schools to teach how NOT to try a case - it's a pretty poor lawyer who leaves it up to an enterprising juror to save his client from the electric chair. But, Henry Fonda does that amidst the finest supporting cast ever put on film.
JIMMY THE GENT - Another pre-code movie that has a wealth of pizazz - including one of the few movies with Jimmy Cagney and Bette Davis. Now that's super-pizazz.
ON TCM JANUARY 2019
This month, Kathryn Grayson is the star of the month. From the first time I saw her, in Kiss Me Kate on TV, I was hooked. A beautiful lady with the pipes of a nightingale, Grayson was a much better actress than she was given credit for. So leave yourself some time on Tuesdays this month to check out this great actress with a great voice.
1/1 TWENTIETH CENTURY This is a madcap comedy starring John Barrymore in his best movie performance and Carole Lombard in the role that made her a star.
1/2 VIVA ZAPATA! Elia Kazan directs Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn in a John Steinbeck script about the rise and fall of Mexico's greatest revolutionary.
1/3 SPARTACUS This is the best epic ever filmed. Stanley Kubrick was brought in to direct when producer/star Kirk Douglas fired Anthony Mann. Every performance in this all-star cast is one of, if not the best, of their careers. The Dalton Trumbo script is the best he wrote and the score by Alfred North is a classic.
1/4 CYRANO DE BERGERAC Jose Ferrer in a virtuoso performance as the greatest swordsman in France. This translation of the original French script is also the best.
1/5 BLUE GARDENIA Fritz Lang directs Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, Ann Sothern, Raymond Burr, Jeff Donnell, George Reeves and Nat King Cole (he's the cafe singer who croons the title song) in this classic film noir.
1/6 THE LETTER Bette Davis emerges from a dark shadow to shoot a man, several times, as the movie begins. Was she defending herself after being attacked by him? Or was he being murdered in cold blood?
1/7 THE CLOCK Vincente Minnelli directs his then-wife Judy Garland in her best non-singing role as a young woman who falls in love with soldier Robert Walker.
1/8 THE NAKED SPUR In the 1950s, Jimmy Stewart made a serious of adult westerns and this is the best of them.
1/9 MAN ON A TIGHTROPE One of Fredric March's best performances as the head of a small circus trying to get his people threw the Iron Curtain.
1/10 THE CONSPIRATORS Hedy Lamarr heads an all-star cast of character actors in this take-off on Casablanca.
1/11 FIVE CAME BACK Did you like the TV series, Lost? Then this is for you.
1/12 A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS Fred Zinnemann directs Oscar-winner Paul Schofield in the best movie about henry VIII and his times.
1/13 A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN Over 25 years old and still as fresh as the day it was released - but remember, there's no crying in baseball! And Madonna is very good too.
1/14 THE PUBLIC ENEMY James Cagney becomes Jame Cagney in this early crime flick.
1/15 ANCHORS AWAY Kelly, Sinatra, Grayson - they sing, they dance, they make moview history.
1/16 MONKEY BUSINESS There is no reason to watch this movie except for the fact that it is very funny with Cary Grant playing the nerdy scientist who discovers Marilyn Monroe.
1/17 THE HAPPY THIEVES A good caper flick with Rex Harrison and Rita Hayworth.
1/18 KING RAT Prisoner of war camp movie that made s star of George Segal.
1/19 THE BIG CHILL Almost every major actor of a generation gets his/her start in the movie about growing up, finally.
1/20 MURDER MY SWEET Dick Powell grows up and becomes a film noir star.
1/21 A SOLDIER'S STORY African-American soldiers have their lives turned upside down in the tale of murder.
1/22 THE TOAST OF NEW ORLEANS Grayson and Lanza sing.
1/23 BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE Not a great movie but just fun to watch Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak and Jack Lemmon.
1/24 KISMET Minnelli directs this light-weight but fun film.
1/25 THE FOUNTAINHEAD Gary Cooper as an Ayn Rand hero swimming against the tide and picking up a besotted Patricia Neal.
1/26 HIGH SOCIETY Musical remake of The Philadelphia Story with songs by Cole Porter sung by Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Celeste Holm and Satchmo!
1/27 THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY A non-singing Julie Andrews falls in love with a cowardly James Garner.
1/28 BULLIT Tough crime drama with Steve McQueen in the best car chase ever filmed - until The French Connection.
1/29 KISS ME KATE Cole Porter takes on Shakespeare and comes up a winner.
1/30 WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE See why Bette Davis is Bette Davis - an unswerving commitment to a character no matter where it takes her.
1/31 THE PLAYER Robert Altman looks at Hollywood - it ain't pretty but it's a lot of fun.