by Dean | Jun 9, 2014 | General
In the sublime Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Judy Garland plays a teenaged girl even though she was then in her early 20s and divorced. But it hardly matters: she is both convincing and luminous in the role. This is partly due to makeup artist Dorothy Ponedel, but Garland’s technical skills remained first-rate and are the most winning thing about the film. There is never any lack of nuance or proper restraint in her singing; well does she serve such dandy numbers as “The Boy Next Door” and “The Trolley Song.”
Directed by Vincente Minnelli, St. Louis is a 1940s pop masterpiece. After seeing it for the umpteenth time, I noticed something: the characters in the film are strangely sanctified through being a close-knit family. No wonder they sing a lot; they’re usually happy and expectant. They’re far removed from the dark domain Judy chose to create, before the making of the film, by getting both a divorce and an abortion.
Meet Me in St. Louis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Jun 8, 2014 | General
Hollywood has transferred to the big screen a very popular YA novel, The Fault in Our Stars, about teens with cancer (principally two of them—in a romance). Although a strong film in several ways, I found it largely unsatisfying because of the sick boy (Ansel Elgort) who is too well-adjusted to be true (as well as handsome, of course) and the asinine, contemptible writer enacted by William Dafoe. Every time these two elements are thrust before us, the picture struggles to be effectual. It shouldn’t have to.
Ansel Elgort – DSC_0113 2 (Photo credit: MingleMediaTVNetwork)
by Dean | Jun 3, 2014 | General
Those who have never visited Tulsa, Oklahoma—my home town—might be quite taken by the buildings and other sights filmed by Jonathan Rossetti for his low-budget Home, James (2014), a love story set in Tulsa. The movie is clearly a valentine to the city, while the camera sends a valentine to actress Kerry Knuppe in that it plainly loves her.
Rossetti himself, a former Tulsan, plays James, a low-income gent who earns his bread by photographing parties and driving intoxicated people to their homes in their own vehicles. One night he chauffeurs big socializer Cooper (Knuppe), the woman he will begin a now gratifying, now depressing affair with. Cooper drinks a lot, but the real problem for James is that, though she has no good reason to do so, she wants to leave Tulsa for New York. How should James react?
This is most certainly a freshman effort. There are too many clichés of various kinds in Home, James (such as voiceover voicemail on cell phones). What saves the film is 1) the confident performances of Knuppe and Julie Gearheard, who co-wrote the script with Rossetti, and 2) the straightforward realism. No cop-out emerges at the end of this film which tells us that what seems to be easy answers in a love liaison too often are not—and which focuses on the human inclination to spend minutes of our time in a drunken stupor. (Why do people do it?)
I hope that what Rossetti and Gearheard have done augurs good things for the future. And I hope the sophomore effort is set in Tulsa too.
by Dean | Jun 1, 2014 | General
The man who hires the assassins is morally worse than the assassins—that, at any rate, is the case in Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946), a dignified and mostly interesting noir mystery.
The titles sequence calls the film Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers since it is based on a story of his, but this is not Hemingway’s creation. It is a cinematic work scripted by Anthony Veiller. (And that’s that.)
The solid allure of Ava Gardner lasts from the minute she appears on screen to the end of the film. Burt Lancaster is the star, but his acting is inadequate. Far better are such performers as Sam Levene and Albert Dekker.
In 1964 Don Siegel released a grittier, very entertaining remake of The Killers starring Lee Marvin and Ronald Reagan (who is a bit beyond passable). Considered too violent for TV, the medium it was made for, it opened in theatres instead and is worth seeing despite some obvious faults.
The Killers (1946 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | May 30, 2014 | General
The 24 reboot on Fox (Live Another Day) is getting shockingly intense. Terrorist insanity streams forward and the U.S. President (William Devane) had better start relying on Jack Bauer in a wholehearted way. Er, the U.S. government has really been blowing it. The zealous CIA agent, Kate Morgan, joins Bauer in his anti-Psychopath With A Drone cause, and a Marine commander peevishly complains about Morgan and gets her removed from the case! And this is in the face of an on-coming drone attack that will fry thousands of Brits! Way to go, government!
The action scenes in 24 are adroitly handled and most of the acting is delightfully good. It’s a creepy role, Michelle Fairley, but you’re doing an impeccable job in it.
Title card for 24 (TV series) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | May 28, 2014 | General
The dialogue in the movie Drinking Buddies (2013) is so natural it is eminently dull and banal. At least it’s a romantic drama that doesn’t care about the conventions of American romantic flicks, but it is pretty thin. Also, why the women in the film are so fond of the bearded, uninteresting schlub named Luke (Jake Johnson) I don’t know. Man, is Olivia Wilde a friendly tease to him.
It’s very well acted, this Joe Swanberg film, but other people liked it better than I did.
English: Olivia Wilde at the 2010 Comic Con in San Diego (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | May 27, 2014 | General
The Light in the Piazza (novel) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Clara is a young American woman with the mental age of a ten-year-old. Fabrizio, who lives in Florence where Clara and her mother Margaret are vacationing, falls in love with the American without knowing about this childlike mind. Ineluctably Clara is happy in the young man’s company and Margaret wants this happiness to go on for her. Failing to guide Fabrizio and his family to the truth about Clara, Margaret disconcertedly wants, yet does not want, the marriage between Clara and Fabrizio that will be forthcoming. Her ambivalence ends, however, even in the face of her husband Noel’s disapproval of the relationship.
Margaret is the main character in Elizabeth Spencer’s short novel, The Light in the Piazza (1960), and although a flawed person, she is also a loving mother standing on a precipice for the sake of her daughter. After the marriage has taken place we read, “Her head was spinning and she leaned . . . against the cool stone column.” Did Margaret do the right thing? The disconcertedness exists to the end, and yet Clara is a woman, not a girl, and is being loved by Fabrizio. The novel is about when moral ambiguity leaves us suffering. It is about the dilemmas people incur when another’s deprivation can be halted. Or so they think.
Light is a notable tale which happened to inspire a sophisticated stage musical of the same name. Lucidly written, it is nicely structured and memorably character-driven. . . I’ve read it twice and have not detected a blemish.
by Dean | May 23, 2014 | General
Underwater, and abovewater, seascapes abound and offer much in the Pixar cartoon feature, Finding Nemo (2003). I couldn’t catch everything the fast-talking sea creatures said, but I saw the sights.
Triple-colored clown fish suspended (floating) above the anemone, legions of pink, transparent jellyfish filling the frame, a distant white light and the distant underside of a boat in depths either dim or utterly black, a scary overhead shot of greedy sea gulls beginning to cover the wooden dock on which two appetizing fish out of water lay.
Really, human-like fish are a puny subject for a narrative movie, but Nemo reminds us that a strange and fascinating underwater world is there. I have no interest in the script, one which children will enjoy, but was indeed turned on by the visual beauty and thrills.
Cover of Finding Nemo
by Dean | May 20, 2014 | General
Decades ago Robert Bresson turned a great novel by Georges Bernanos—Diary of a Country Priest—into a great film (1950).
Is there suffering in the priestly life? There can be, yes—plenty of it—and there is for the country padre (Claude Laydu) in this work. Along with being dissatisfied with himself and his service to God, he has come down with stomach cancer. Apropos of service to God, the priest is put to the test by people who are far from the Lord, by rebels, albeit a rebel like Chantal (Nicole Ladmiral) suffers too. Like the priest, she is rejected.
In any event, the world does not understand the Christian. Even in a country village a priest is but a stranger and a pilgrim, to use biblical language. But locations in what is (in various ways) a cancer-ridden world do not matter, for Grace, the film tells us, is everywhere.
(In French with English subtitles)
Diary of a Country Priest (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | May 14, 2014 | General
Mean Girls (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
To me, Mean Girls (2004), which is ten years old this year, contains too much plot, but that’s not much of a fault. What’s more, the third time I saw it I thought the jokes were inadequately paced, but with a fourth viewing I realized they actually aren’t. So Tina Fey’s farce is delightfully watchable, an effective Hollywood comedy for once. Fey knows how to write one-liners—edgy, politically incorrect ones—and Mark Waters’s direction never drags them down. Plus the actors’ delivery of them is flawless.
A certain cognitive dissonance is created because Lindsay Lohan, the movie’s star, is likable, rather sweet, and we never would have expected the moral meltdown we later got from her. Her acting is spot-on, bearing the kind of pull that makes us miss her when she’s not on screen.
