by Dean | Aug 24, 2019 | General
Charley Chase was an acclaimed movie comedian of decades past. The star of numerous two-reelers, in the silent 22-minute Be Your Age (1926), he plays a bashful nobody (or “nobody”) who, darn it, just has to resign himself to his boss’s, an attorney’s, objectionable plan. He pays for his passivity, and it’s all richly amusing, a modest winner with an agreeable cast (especially Chase), with Oliver Hardy, not yet great, in a supporting role.
Even better is Chase’s sound film, the 18-minute The Grand Hooter (1937), wherein the amiable gent is, alas, a ninny of a husband. His wife’s complaint that he spends too much time at the Hoot Owl Lodge and not enough with her prompts the two to go off together to a hotel, but Charley’s ninnyism won’t quit. The piece is uproariously funny, suitably paced by director Del Lord, giving genuine proof that Chase was able to make a smooth transition from silent film to talkies. And it was chivalrous to keep Charley’s wife (Peggy Stratford) from being mistakenly kicked in the rear end by a hotel detective.
Both movies are available on YouTube.
by Dean | Aug 22, 2019 | General
The American version of Gabriele Muccino’s Italian film, The Last Kiss, directed by Tony Goldwyn, is as dandy as the original. Neither flick is great, but both are vivacious dramatic grabbers.
Goldwyn’s film (2006) is, as critic Ella Taylor opined, an “admirably understated handling,” albeit she adds that it’s a handling of “dispiritingly slender material.” Not to me. Slender material, yes, but not dispiritingly slender. The movie is a partly comic roundelay of absolute chemistry between guys and gals and of turmoil and bitterness. It’s simple but electric.
More, it’s an actor’s triumph. Well, not for Casey Affleck, neither interesting nor deep enough, but Jacinda Barrett is entirely convincing in sweet calm and in fury. Zach Braff and Rachel Bilson, though they never surprise us, are never false. Blythe Danner is commanding in nuance, and Michael Weston is all earthy appeal. It is, finally, proper that Goldwyn’s Last Kiss is sexier than Muccino’s original—that it is spicy and somewhat candid since the first version has the advantage of being the first version.
Cover of The Last Kiss (Widescreen Edition)
by Dean | Aug 19, 2019 | General
Life is hard enough without subjecting yourself to your own stupidity. The store owner played by the peerless W.C. Fields in It’s A Gift (1934) could attest to this if he wasn’t wearing blinders. Comic misery grows as Fields allows himself to be flatly cheated at the same time he is victimized by a shrewish wife and a contrary daughter. The movie exists for its extended sight-gag situations, well enough directed by Norman McLeod, notwithstanding it all starts weakening in the last 15 minutes. One remembers the down-to-earth farce, though.
It’s a Gift (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Aug 16, 2019 | General
Miranda Otto, as 20-year-old misfit Dimity in Love Serenade (1996), gets it right: Dimity’s loneliness, shyness, quirkiness, and naive impulsiveness. And, like her fellow players Rebecca Firth and George Shevtsov, she succeeds as a comic actor, indispensable for shaping Shirley Barrett‘s Australian film into a funny curio. But a curio, according to dictionary.com, is “valued as a curiosity.” Love Serenade ought to be valued as that and more—as a startling look at isolation, at the abovementioned loneliness. This isn’t done, however, without the film getting (amusingly) weirder as it goes along.
Barrett—director and sole writer here—is good at seeing scenes and makes competent use of space. The dialogue she has written for her characters is wildly clever. She is patently talented, and LS should be seen several times.
by Dean | Aug 14, 2019 | General
Centered on the characters of Krystyna, Stefan, Bruno and Rachel, the novel Polonaise, by Piers Paul Read, concerns Polish people from decades past who join, and eventually depart from, the Communist movement. One of the book’s themes is nihilism. Another is the way Life overwhelms Ideology, or at least forces it to take a back seat. It is a compelling read which nevertheless mildly disappointed me with its final standard anti-nihilistic philosophy—a not very fresh summation.
All the same, the book is wonderfully intelligent. It is interesting to see it go from being a depiction of political sweat and commitment to being a chaste drawing room drama before it gets its hands dirty again. And, ineluctably, Read is disinclined to ignore sex—significant but no source of salvation—but is never sensationalistic.
by Dean | Aug 11, 2019 | General
In Martin Scorsese’s 1973 film, the mean streets of Little Italy remain mean because they are far removed from such spiritual values as repentance and stillness—and, in the case of Robert De Niro’s Johnny Boy, from honor. Charlie (Harvey Keitel), the levelheaded lost soul raised a Catholic, knows all this.
It’s all too bad, however, that Mean Streets is an arty dud. Constantly it is unbelievable as it moves desultorily to some loud, inept drama in its last 15 minutes. I admit that the film captures the free-floating absurdity and madness in the urban characters’ lives, but that’s its only contribution to cinematic art. It doesn’t help that De Niro looks like a homely beatnik.
Cover of Mean Streets
by Dean | Aug 7, 2019 | General
I disesteem Elvis Presley‘s charmless and shallow acting in Flaming Star (1960), but the movie manages to be one of the better Westerns of the Sixties. With the help of Nunnally Johnson, Clair Huffaker scripted her own, probably not boring novel, and it was shot effectively for Cinemascope by Don Siegel.
Presley plays a half-white, half-Kiowa young man. Chief Buffalo Horn (Roldolpho Acosta) is vexed by the white man’s land expansion and fears for the Kiowas’ survival. The whites react to Indian violence with obtuseness and hardheartedness, but the film does not side with the Kiowas. It mostly sides with Pacer (Presley) and his white relatives, justifiably sympathetic to the half breed when he joins the harsh Indians for battle. See the movie to find out what flaming star means.
The flick is unpretty-looking without rawness, and the action scenes are bluntly, thrillingly done; good for 1960. Star isn’t dated, though; it’s nearly as watchable, I bet, as it was on Cinemascope. And it has a thoughtful screenplay.
by Dean | Aug 5, 2019 | General
Not long ago I dissed the song “Better Now” by Post Malone. I listened to it again, and it’s better now. That is, the song is a bit better than I thought. I still don’t think it’s melodically meritorious but that doesn’t mean it has a bad sound. This despite the lousy grammar in the unimportant lyrics.
For a perfect contemporary pop song, there’s the Carly Rae Jepsen album cut, “I’ll Be Your Girl,” a catchy little moral drama if there ever was one. The music is speedy, the words finely wrought, and Jepsen’s voice that of a smart undergrad. It’s too good for corporatized radio.
by Dean | Jul 30, 2019 | General
I did not like the Hal Hartley films Henry Fool and Fay Grim, but the third one in the director’s trilogy—Ned Rifle (2014)—is something else again. It’s a characteristically oddball intellectual comedy about a young Christian, Ned Rifle (Liam Aiken), who is confused enough to want to kill his repelling father (Thomas Jay Ryan) for ruining his imprisoned mother’s life. Not romantically Ned takes up with Susan (Aubrey Plaza) who, unknown to Ned, was once the victim of his father’s, Henry Fool’s, statutory rape. Susan is aware of this too.
It seems we may infer from this movie that the twenty-first century is no different from any other century in that it is one of sin and one of enlightened religious self-interest, and religious commitment. The century inevitably serves up America the saved and America the damned, as it were; and it is sometimes challenging to tell one from the other.
This is probably Hartley’s best picture, despite more striking characters in some of those earlier films (e.g. Trust). But Ned Rifle is just as piercing and palatable as the early stuff, and its black-comic plot is free of the artist’s past adolescent jolts.
by Dean | Jul 24, 2019 | General
Having little character exploration, Rawhide (1951)—the movie—is nevertheless a good one about criminal men. It wasn’t meant to be The Wild Bunch, though, and so it offers a hero in Tyrone Powers‘s Tom and, in fact, a heroine in Susan Hayward’s saucy Vinnie. For good measure, Henry Hathaway’s film is one of the best I know about the holding of hostages: Tom and Vinnie need to free themselves and Vinnie’s toddler niece from a pack of fugitive thieves. One of them, smart Rafe Zimmerman, seems like a gentleman but isn’t (Who are you, Zimmerman? Tom demands). He will eliminate witnesses.
Hathaway’s directing is impeccable, with concentrated action in the frames and expert camera placement. He gets real Westerner prowess from his actors—notable performances by Hayward, Hugh Marlowe (Zimmerman) and Jack Elam. Dudley Nichols wrought what is apparently an original script, and it’s the kind of entertainment piece that makes you want to see the writer’s talent in other movies.
