Movie-Viewing Experiences 3/12/16 - 12/12/16
A+ = Adored Masterwork A = Excellent A- = Very Good B+ = Good B = Nice Try B- = Tolerable
C = Seriously Flawed D = Pretty Awful E = Truly Dreadful: Looking Into the Void F = Vile & Offensive: The Void
THE KIDNAPPERS aka THE LITTLE KIDNAPPERS (1953)
d: Philip Leacock
CAST: Duncan Macrae; Jon Whiteley; Vincent Winter; Jean Anderson; Theodore Bikel
> sweet movie about children (as opposed to being a "children's film") which could soften stone; set in 1904, two orphaned little boys are sent to live with their spartan-living / farming grandparents in Nova Scotia; the old man (a super-Christian-to-the-max type) insists that everybody under his roof live by his version of goodness...play & fun & dreaming are all banished; the two boys desperately want a dog, the old guy says no, the boys find a baby and adopt that as their pet instead; natural performances are the film's highlight and the director's lightness of touch reins in both the grimness & the potential schmaltz; a total charmer
Award-Worthy Performances
Duncan Macrae; Jon Whiteley & Vincent Winter; Jean Anderson
ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT (1941)
d: Vincent Sherman
CAST: Humphrey Bogart; Conrad Veidt; Kaaren Verne; William Demarest; Peter Lorre; Frank McHugh; Judith Anderson; Jane Darwell; Jackie Gleason; Phil Silvers
> not sure how this hodge-podge manages to work, but it does; a real conglomerate of genres: espionage thriller + urban comedy + murder mystery + WWII propaganda piece + gangster actioner; some white-knuckling fight sequences lift the suspense quotient; greatest asset is the absolutely topnotch supporting cast who all play their parts effectively without competitive grandstanding (which must have been so tempting); Bogie hangs on to enough of his Sam Spade persona to deftly handle the rapid-fire wisecracks and he relievedly leaves the slapstick & pratfalls to the experts; too long by 1940's standards, it falters a couple of times but manages to regain its momentum; ends with one helluva bang!
THREE ON A MATCH (1932)
d: Mervyn LeRoy
CAST: Joan Blondell; Ann Dvorak; Bette Davis; Warren William; Humphrey Bogart
> unusually-constructed film... the story is told in chronological segments, some lasting only seconds with few extended scenes; three teenage friends all light their cigarettes from a single match... and then Doom gradually tightens its grip on the unlucky third girl; creative Thomas Hardy / Great Gatsby / Lindbergh Kidnapping amalgam; the story toughens up as it zips along, almost daring you to predict its climax... and what a climax!... genuinely shocking with little time to take it in; Ann is a revelation as the self-ruined young woman who is unable to regain control of her life; initially dismissed as a turgid soapie, this is so much more
Award-Worthy Performance
Ann Dvorak
NADINE (1987)
d: Robert Benton
CAST: Kim Basinger; Jeff Bridges; Rip Torn; Gwen Verdon
> nifty comedy with an equally nifty comedic turn by Kim...laughed aloud a number of times, mainly due to business she was doing or the inflection she gave to certain lines...a Carole Lombard / Jean Arthur style 'n' quality performance; plot manages the neat trick of being both quite logical and quite exaggerated (ditzy big-hairdo woman accidentally gets her hands on confidential highway plans...her husband sees an opportunity to turn this into money...local bigtime crim wants them & will stop at nothing etc); oldtime screwball comedy roots are obvious and given a slight twist without sliding into parody; a film-type rare after the 1950's
Award-Worthy Performance
Kim Basinger
THE STRANGE ONE (1957)
d: Jack Garfein
CAST: Ben Gazzara; George Peppard; Pat Hingle; Arthur Storch
> bullying & bastardry in a US military college; one of those stories where a leader who is a manipulative, vicious creep pulls the strings of weaklings who eventually turn on him; comes across as an episode of Playhouse Theatre - not that there's anything wrong with that - and is pretty much roombound and wordy, but still quite involving; what Ben the Bully does is fairly reprehensible but at no point is there any suggestion that maybe his behaviour is a consequence of military schooling principles; the guy's payback is strangely not as satisfying as it should be and you are left with the question "is that all he gets?"; however, only the typical-for-the-times depiction of a homosexual as a weaselly artistic degenerate is an annoyance...the story itself has something worthwhile to say
WHITE SQUALL (1996)
d: Ridley Scott
CAST: Jeff Bridges; Scott Wolf; John Savage; Caroline Goodall; Ryan Phillippe
> basically a seafaring version of Dead Poets Society; group of rich teenage boys go on a school sailing trip...y'know the drill...they leave as boys but come back as men; Jeff is the tough salty captain who is everyboy's father figure; usual assortment of troubled teens...a scaredy-cat & a virgin & a spoiled brat & a bundle of anger & a kid with daddy issues; they learn to work together, to depend upon and trust each other and overcome their obstacles to become etc etc etc; not bad, but apart from the title climactic storm, the action is minimal and the conversation is probing of the here-let-me-help-you kind; the tribunal at the end is punctured by a big emotional speech which is gag-producing; still, the at-sea scenes are grand and do get the hair flowing and the nostrils flaring at times
THE SAPPHIRES (2012)
d: Wayne Blair
CAST: Chris O'Dowd; Deborah Mailman; Jessica Mauboy; Shari Sebbens; Miranda Tapsell
> The Commitments (or even The Blues Brothers)... with four indigenous Aussie women... circa 1968; if I was a cynical man, I would state that this is a feelgood-by-numbers movie (great songs + joking asides + romance between opposites etc) so thank Otis I'm not like that; usual selection of soul classics are covered by the group ("Land of a 1000 Dances" & "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"... y'know) which have been used to rev up countless other movies; despite gravitas being injected via the horrors of the Vietnam War & stolen children & racism, the story still feels thin, as if the drama is merely a special guest star; Jessica certainly cooks as lead singer; pleasant & passable
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM (1935)
d: Max Reinhardt; William Dieterle
CAST: James Cagney; Dick Powell; Olivia de Havilland; Mickey Rooney; Joe E. Brown
> I have only ever read three Shakespearean plays (all tragedies) & I have only ever seen two Shakespearean movies which have knocked my socks off (1971's Macbeth & 1955's Richard III), so a passionate fan of the guy I am not; still, I think the old adage that Bill was the originator of all story plots is probably true; AMND (aka Prehistoric Fantasy-Rom-Com) is pretty stupid and this Hollywood version is too faeried-up & florally-orchestrated to be entirely palatable; still, its saving graces are the charismatic performances of Jimmy Cagney (!!!) and Mickey Rooney (!!!); just wish the script had been sacrilegiously slashed by half an hour
Award-Worthy Performances
James Cagney; Mickey Rooney
THE FOUNDER (2016)
d: John Lee Hancock
CAST: Michael Keaton; Nick Offerman; John Carroll Lynch; Laura Dern
> I am very grateful to the USA: they saved the world's arse twice (WWI & WWII of course) & they lifted the lives of millions of people through blues / jazz / rock music + microwave ovens + potato chips + dental floss + comicbooks + a thousand other innovations; the Yanks are also responsible for a lot of bad shit that the world has had to accept, like it or not, and their greatness is now over (as Will McAvoy so perfectly said...); this movie is about two little guys who hit upon a clever idea and were taken advantage of & ruined by another little guy who was a coldblooded prick...the rise & fall of American morality in a hamburger story; Michael plays Michael well but without anything fresh being added; while the movie wants you to go ahhh for the two losers, it also wants you to join in with a celebration of ruthlessness
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA (1965)
d: Alexander Mackendrick
CAST: Anthony Quinn; Deborah Baxter; James Coburn; Dennis Price; Nigel Davenport
> I've come across three well-respected critics who rate this film very highly in their end-of-year lists...would love to sit down with them one day and hear them explain why; it's a reasonable kids pirate-adventure movie but it curiously lacks the usual rousing features (there's very little action; the #1 kid is an irritating tomboy; the ending is downbeat and sad) which means it's more awkward than effective; the stowaway kids are the endlessly-whining-oh-so-British types who really annoy me (not to mention their hand-wringing mother); there are hints of sexual threat and the tragic death of a child but these events are shrugged away with no apparent emotional impact on the characters whatsoever; and the pirate captain has a corny heart of gold which just suddenly emerges from nowhere; beats me...
EMMA (1932)
d: Clarence Brown
CAST: Marie Dressler; Richard Cromwell; Jean Hersholt; Myrna Loy
> since turning 50, my stomach can only take so much...I don't put sugar in coffee & I don't eat pavlova & I can't take unmitigated confection like this movie; yes, yes, I know it was all the rage back in the early 30's and it's unfair to judge popular culture outside of its era but... this movie is just too much; everybody's nanna Marie plays the live-in housekeeper Emma who singlehandedly raises four children (Dad is an airhead inventor and Mum inconsiderately dies)... the kids grow up and, apart from the youngest, they become spoiled-rotten bastards who accuse Emma of poisoning their father for money (which they want); instead of telling the ungrateful shits to get stuffed, she gives them the money anyway after they nearly had her hanged for murder!; throw another log on the martyr
VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED (1976)
d: Stuart Rosenberg
CAST: Faye Dunaway; Max von Sydow; Oskar Werner; Malcolm McDowell; Orson Welles; James Mason; Lee Grant; Julie Harris; Wendy Hiller; Jose Ferrer; Ben Gazzara; Katharine Ross; Denholm Elliott; Sam Wanamaker; Fernando Rey; Jonathan Pryce; Janet Suzman
> what a bore...one of those all-star cast movies where everyone is reduced to cardboard cut-out characters; this time, it is a Holocaust story...specifically, the ill-fated and incredibly cruel voyage of the MS St. Louis, loaded with Jews from Germany, bound for resettlement in Cuba; like Ship of Fools (and Grand Hotel and The Towering Inferno and...) we are privvy to the personal troubles of the mingling crowd (infidelity; illness; Nazi fanaticism) while something far more tragic unfolds around them; no actor manages to inject any vitality into their performance, so the storytelling-wretchedness just drones on and on and on and...
Got something you want to tell me?
Go right ahead.
