Movie-Viewing Experiences 14/11/16 - 19/11/16
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
PROOF (2005)
d: John Madden
CAST: Gwyneth Paltrow; Jake Gyllenhaal; Anthony Hopkins; Hope Davis
> another mathematics + madness movie (like 2001's A Beautiful Mind) and again I was a reluctant viewer at first but soon became absorbed by the story; Gwyneth is lovely and totally convincing as the daughter of a maths genius whose mind is rapidly deteriorating... she commits herself to him and puts her own young life on hold as a result...and worries that she has the same mental illness; fortunately for all us normal people, the movie doesn't waste time dribbling out maths-speak...it's all about human stuff like trust, wellbeing and independence; an interactional character study, it rarely drags and is engaging throughout
Award-Worthy Performance
Gwyneth Paltrow
MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES (1957)
d: Joseph Pevney
CAST: James Cagney; Dorothy Malone; Jane Greer; Jim Backus; Roger Smith
> difficult to explain my fondness for this biopic of actor Lon Chaney, so numerous are its faults (terribly soapy at times & the support cast aren't all they should be & the make-up effects aren't up to the standard of Chaney's originals & it takes too long to get to Lon's Hollywood years) but the two major assets (the wonderful performance of Jimmy & the opportunity to see him do his one-of-a-kind dancing) are major indeed; the depiction of living with deafness is well done (far better than in, say, Children of a Lesser God); and the movie sticks reasonably close to the truth of Lon Chaney's struggles, rise and too-soon departure
Award-Worthy Performance
James Cagney
THE TAILOR OF PANAMA (2001)
d: John Boorman
CAST: Pierce Brosnan; Geoffrey Rush; Jamie Lee Curtis; Brendan Gleeson
> a John le Carre spy movie, so it is complex, quick-paced and full of abominable people whose actions have international ramifications; Pierce plays an absolute shit of a spy who is sent to Panama and uses the opportunity to get his hands on big money & Geoffrey is his willing stooge who just wants to get ahead and not have his life-lies revealed...and so the wheels turn...; both actors are obviously enjoying their change-of-pace roles (Pierce was still Mid-Bond at the time); the story is suitably engaging...but I expected / wanted more of a sleazy Callan / Smiley feel to it all...this comes across as more of a heist movie than an espionage thriller; well done overall, but a little too aloof to completely hook me
FIRST LADY (1937)
d: Stanley Logan
CAST: Kay Francis; Preston Foster; Walter Connolly; Anita Louise
> a light-hearted look at Washington drawing-room politics from a 1930's woman's point of view; obviously based on a stage play, the film is very chatty, but fortunately the clever dialogue is a mixture of both era-specific and for-the-ages zingers; Kay is fun in this (she was a huge star in the 30's but gradually vanished as WWII started) but she looks a little unsteady at times without a strong leading man to bounce quips off...still, her bitchy ever-so-polite machinations are enjoyable; not a drop of reality in the whole thing of course, but so what...it's an entertainment of the old kind when audiences revered wit as much as spectacle and sensation (P.S. Good luck America)
KHARTOUM (1966)
d: Basil Dearden
CAST: Charlton Heston; Laurence Olivier; Ralph Richardson; Richard Jordan
> another one of those British Empire movies where the native inhabitants of the occupied lands are exploited then abandoned by their conquerors; let's see...an American plays an Englishman and an Englishman plays an Arab and the Arabs play the close-up extras who get shot; Charlton is actually pretty good as Gordon of the Sudan (although the General's troubled sexuality is understandably left-out of the portrayal); the real star of the movie is the superb cinematography...the vistas are luscious and the spectacle is truly impressive if you can see it on a biggish screen; an epic which is considerate enough to stay around the 2 hour mark and only have a couple of dull spots which involve subdued talking inside tents; ignore the historical inaccuracies for maximum appreciation
FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM (2016)
d: David Yates
CAST: Eddie Redmayne; Katherine Waterston; Dan Fogler; Colin Farrell; Ezra Miller
> obviously #1 of a franchise-to-be, this is yet another wizards 'n' warlocks SFX extravaganza; the setting of 1920's Art-Deco New York adds an extra design attribute to the story, helping it not to stay too firmly in the territory of seen-it-all-before; apart from the visuals (which are...hohum...stunning...), the film's biggest asset is the performance by Eddie...his lopsided, slightly crumpled stance with a gaze that never quite meets other people's is wholly endearing and helps to camouflage the film's over-length...gets my vote as the best performance ever given in a modern fantasy film; nice-looking creatures too
Award-Worthy Performance
Eddie Redmayne
IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING (1949)
d: Lloyd Bacon
CAST: Ray Milland; Paul Douglas; Jean Peters; Ed Begley
> a good example of the sort of forgettable fluff which Bill Collins used to show as the second feature in his "Golden Years of Hollywood" series, Saturday nights, Channel 10, during the 80's in Australia...I watched them all; this has something to do with a college professor who discovers a Flubber-ish formula which makes baseballs "adverse" to wood...so he becomes a pitcher; Ray is too old to be this guy (at 40, you can almost hear his joints click) but he is amusingly supported by Paul (it's not a real baseball film without him or William Bendix); curious that at no point is there any comeuppance dished out even though this is chemically-enhanced cheating in America's national sport; a trivial way to burn 90 minutes
DIRIGIBLE (1931)
d: Frank Capra
CAST: Jack Holt; Ralph Graves; Fay Wray; Roscoe Karns
> doncha love blimps / dirigibles / zeppelins / airships?; this is an adventure / disaster movie which features these floating marvels but, unfortunately, isn't really about them; kicks off with some impressive aerial stunts between biplane & airship, then dwindles down into a romance-anguish subplot and a gung-ho race to the South Pole...the expedition plane crashes & the survivors attempt to walk 900 miles back to base camp (which was so far-fetched for 1931 that it was considered a science-fiction tale!); worst feature is some of the acting (Ralph is just plain bad and usual-comic-relief Roscoe starts sooking just because he gets his frost-bitten foot cut off); still...a dirigible comes to their rescue, which is pretty cool...
THE WATER HORSE: LEGEND OF THE DEEP (2007)
d: Jay Russell
CAST: Alex Etel; Emily Watson; Ben Chaplin; Brian Cox; David Morrissey
> fairly anemic kids film about a boy in 1942 Scotland who finds an egg in the sea...it hatches and out pops a cute-as-the-dickens baby sea dragon; from this point on, it really is a copy of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (some scenes are even staged in a similar way...creature creates chaos inside the home & the family dog chases it & it's pursued by the military etc etc); Alex is instantly appealing as the boy (as he was in 2005's Millions) and the adults are the usual frustrating don't-understand-wonder types; the tie-in with the famous Loch Ness Monster photograph is clever; for little kids who don't really care what they watch as long as it isn't a part of the real world and it contains sweetness and a couple of laughs
THE NIGHT DIGGER aka THE ROAD BUILDER (1971)
d: Alastair Reid
CAST: Patricia Neal; Nicholas Clay; Pamela Brown; Jean Anderson
> Hitchcockian sex-killer thriller which veers between the shock of Psycho and the sleaze of Frenzy before settling for the psycho-explanations of Marnie; script by Roald Dahl + music by Bernard Herrmann + lead acting by Patricia Neal should have delivered something more affecting than this...young man moves into old house to become groundskeeper for blind widow and her spinster daughter; first third is suitably creepy and foreboding (with some delicious twisted humour which I'm sure Roald just couldn't resist), then the first murder is shown in unemotional detail and it staggers around from there; last third heads into totally-unexpected and bizarre territory...the sad serial killer just wants to be loved...
DANIEL (1983)
d: Sidney Lumet
CAST: Timothy Hutton; Mandy Patinkin; Lindsay Crouse; Ed Asner; Amanda Plummer
> a fail that's a real shame; an imagined account of the Julius & Ethel Rosenberg case, this is centred around their fictitious grown son called Daniel who is seeking the truth in his parents' lives; the film cuts in and out of this quest and Daniel & his sister's childhood & spoken-to-camera descriptions of different methods of execution...too many strands in the weave; the regal voice of Paul Robeson is heard during the 1950's sections which clashes almightily with the poppy protest-song-lite tune of the 1980's; some crucial scenes (the children visiting their parents in jail; buses full of left-wingers being attacked) don't work at all; no actor distinguishes themselves and a couple overdo their anguish; a worthy story, disfigured
BABY, THE RAIN MUST FALL (1965)
d: Robert Mulligan
CAST: Steve McQueen; Lee Remick; Don Murray
> unsatisfying character study of a troubled rockabilly singer who wants to behave himself but his childhood won't let him; the two leads are good lookin' people but they have no chemistry (married? do they even know each other?); Steve's attempts at lip-synch-singing are woeful...it is so obvious that it's not his vocals coming out of his mouth that the effect is unintentionally hilarious; the film doesn't spend enough time filling in backstories (why was the kid abandoned? what horrors did his guardian dish out and why didn't anybody stop her?) so when some action / reaction takes place, you're not entirely sure why; while the scene where he stabs at the old bitch's grave in primal rage is affecting, the use of the recurring harpsichord theme reduces it to something out of Tales from the Crypt
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