by Dean | Feb 18, 2016 | General
Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott, both actors, scored a lot of points in directing the 1996 Big Night, for which they chose an easygoing but not too slow pace, dabs of effective slow mo, wise medium shots of people, and Felliniesque dramatics. They both act in the film too, and Tucci, talented guy, co-wrote the original screenplay, which has to do with the efforts of Italian brothers to keep their traditional Italian restaurant afloat in the big-city America of the 1950s. Sadly, one of the brothers has given up all integrity. He is desperate, even betraying his pleasant girlfriend (Minnie Driver). A novel idea obtains, then: i.e., moral compromise takes place so that compromise with cuisine (traditional Italian) might be eschewed. Not that the filmmakers condone this compromise, you understand; they don’t. But it does go on.
Honest and endearing, Big Night is one of the cinematic big deals of ’96.
Cover of Big Night (Ws Keep)
by Dean | Feb 16, 2016 | General
Occasionally dopey (groan! those women in the cat costumes), the 1934 Cleopatra is nevertheless Cecil B. DeMille‘s not-bad historical drama about Cleo, Mark Antony and others.
Because she never truly exhibits the Egyptian queen’s ambitiousness (and is a paleface), Claudette Colbert is somewhat miscast in the title role, but not badly so. Released just when movie censorship was getting tight, the film is patently sensual. After an apparent split-second shot of her naked breasts in DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross, and then Cleopatra, Colbert, a future conservative Republican, swore off sexy roles; but there is a physical splendor, a real pulchritude, about her in this picture. Also, her acting outshines that of the other performers.
Cleopatra (1934 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Feb 14, 2016 | General
In Room (2015), Brie Larson enacts a woman subjected to the same nightmare the three female victims of Ariel Castro incurred. Remember the kidnapping and imprisonment? The woman has a five-year-old son (Jason Trembley) produced through the Castro-like abductor’s routine rape of the woman. . . Human evil in Room is what it is because it deprives other people of what is good and vital (e.g., freedom). Indeed, it is okay with the abductor (Sean Bridgers) if Jack, the young boy, is deprived of a childhood; it is only his mother who provides him with one to the best of her ability. Childhood during victimization is a theme here.
Though not as well-plotted as it is well-made, Lenny Abrahamson‘s film has riveting dramatic scenes and is deeply moving. The most impressive thing about it, though, is the acting of Larson and young Trembley, who contribute a great deal to making the picture fascinating.
Room is based on a novel by Emma Donoghue, who wrote the screenplay.
by Dean | Feb 11, 2016 | General
The comic film, Sleeping with Other People (2015), starring Alison Brie, tries to be endearing through sex talk. A lot of sex talk. I was so un-endeared I stopped watching after about an hour.
Re the barely talented Beyonce Knowles, I wish her performance at the Super Bowl had never received any comment at all. That way, it would have been a dead phenomenon, deservedly.
by Dean | Feb 9, 2016 | General
A man (Karl Malden) foolish enough to marry a teenage girl many years his junior resorts to bullying and violence. He lives, it must be said, in humiliation, for his wife Baby Doll (Carroll Baker) does not love him and refuses to consummate the marriage until she turns 20. Moreover, through a stratagem on the part of a business rival (Eli Wallach), Baby Doll becomes infatuated with the rival.
The 1956 Baby Doll, written by Tennessee Williams, was directed by Elia Kazan, who gladly called the film “unrealistic.” We mostly believe in its unrealism, though, except when the story grows hyperbolic, hysterical. That’s when we see its basic trashiness, also engendered by bits of third-rate directing by Kazan, as in the big fire sequence. To me the film is a guilty pleasure, but nothing more. It is only partly well acted, by Baker and Wallach.
Cropped screenshot of Carroll Baker from the film Baby Doll (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Cover of Baby Doll
