Black & White World

You can tell by the lines I'm reciting, I've seen that movie too.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

North by Northwest (1959)

1959, dir. Alfred Hitchcock, cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau.

Here’s another movie I’m surprised to learn has never gotten a full-on review here in the ol’ movieblog.  North by Northwest is my favorite Hitchcock film and one of my favorite Cary Grant films.  Sure, there are a lot of Hitchcocks that are deeper and darker, that are more thrilling and more intense, but as far as I’m concerned, there are none that are more enjoyable (though many come close).

Roger Thornhill is introduced in the first two minutes of the movie as a liar, a cheat, a womanizer and a mama’s boy.  Maybe part of the reason that the audience finds him so appealing anyway is that he seems well aware of these flaws—maybe even a little sheepish about them.  Most likely the reason he is appealing is that he is played by Grant, who also makes him charming, smart, witty, good-looking in his flannel suit, and dead cool all around.

Ernest Lehmann’s sharp dialogue tends to gloss over the holes in the plot and lack of detail behind who George Kaplan is, who created him, what agency he is supposedly working for, what’s in the microfilm that VanDamme is carrying etc.  None of it matters anyway.  The movie is essentially one big extended chase scene.  The fun of this movie is in the dialogue and the performances.  I wouldn’t mind spending the entire two hours just watching Thornhill and VanDamme trade witty barbs back and forth (“Games?  Must we?”).  Jessie Royce Landis, who in reality was only six years older than Cary Grant, is marvelous as the henpecking controlling Hitchcock Mother archetype—a much milder and funnier version of Norman Bates’s mom.

I have a hard time choosing a favorite scene, but near the top has to be Thornhill’s very clever escape from the art auction.  Another reason Thornhill is so easy to root for—he is so quick on his feet and improvises very easily.  Must be all that advertising training.  I saw this movie for the first time around 1989 or so and it is just as solid and enjoyable today as it was the first time I saw it.  Blu-Ray, please!

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

1964, dir. Stanley Kubrick, cast: Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden.

A fun first—Dr. Strangelove was my first “live-tweeting” experience.  At the suggestion of Patrick, a bunch of film fans on Twitter all watched the viewing together on TCM and tweeted about it while watching.  It’s kind of like watching a movie at a party, and everyone shouts out favorite lines, or random bits of trivia.  It’s not something I could ever do with a movie I hadn’t seen before, because it’s impossible to focus on the movie and follow all the chatter at the same time.  But it was a fun way to enjoy a familiar movie, and I picked up a few new things about the movie in the process, too.  Patrick, for example, pointed out that the pin-up hanging in the cockpit is a poster of Buck Turgidson’s bikini-clad secretary/girlfriend.  I had never noticed that before.

Peter Sellers gives three tour-de-force performances as Group Captain Mandrake, as President Muffley, and as Dr. Strangelove—all very different roles, which he plays with varying degrees of abandonment.  And as excellent as Sellers is in this movie (especially taking into account that he’s doing the work of three people), my favorite performance goes to George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson (the names in this movie do border on silly at times, let’s be honest).  Scott, as always, is 100% committed to every line, every look, every stick of gum he compulsively pops in his mouth (six. I counted), every move—even his unplanned tumble in front of the Big Board.

Another thing I learned is that the release of Dr. Strangelove upstaged and pretty much ruined the simultaneous release of Fail Safe—which is also a pretty damn fine film, so that’s a shame.  I’d rather watch Strangelove, though.  Comedy makes better cautionary tales.  Lily asked why it only got 4½ stars—5 is reserved for perfect movies, and Strangelove, while wonderful, is not quite perfect.  There are some moments that drag, some that are a little too over the top.  It’s damn close, but it’s not quite perfect.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)

1944, dir. Preston Sturges, cast: Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton, William Demarest.

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek was my introduction to the bizarre and wonderful world of Preston Sturges, way back around 1987.  It was in a film class, and although I already considered myself a fan of classic films by this time, Morgan’s Creek was a real eye-opener—I could not believe the things they were able to get away with in a 1944 film, in fact I kind of still can’t.  Let’s be honest:  I think we all know Trudy didn’t really marry any guy named Ratzky-watzky.  Come on.

I’ve seen the movie a number of times since that first in-class viewing, and this time around I found a real sense of appreciation for Sturges’s ability to balance the movie.  Morgan’s Creek is probably his most frenetic, most hysterical, most breakneck, fever-pitched screwball slapstick movie (possible exception—Mad Wednesday, which tipped the scales too far), but it’s balanced by some really lovely, quiet, sweet scenes.  There is one scene of Trudy and Norval walking down the main street of town, arm in arm, leaning their heads together a little as they walk along, and it is such a perfect movie moment—it also shows that they really are made for each other.  Trudy is the only thing that calms Norval, and Norval is the only thing that grounds the flighty Trudy.

The entire cast (as is always the case in a Sturges film) is fantastic—Eddie Bracken, a man who sadly didn’t get a whole lot of lead roles in his day, is unmatched in his anxiety-ridden portrayal of Norval, but also plays his love scenes with Trudy with such sincerity that it’s nearly impossible not to fall in love with him.  Betty Hutton seems to be having the time of her life in this romp, and frankly won my heart in her very first appearance on screen, lip-synching to the basso-profundo “The Bell in the Bay.”  If I have any criticism, it’s that sometimes, as he is wont to do, Sturges crosses that very fine line between perfectly-pitched screwball over into annoyingly-hysterical territory.  But all these years after seeing it for the first time, it still makes me laugh.  Highly recommended.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Take the Money and Run (1969)

1969, dir. Woody Allen, cast: Woody Allen, Janet Margolin.

Long overdue revisit with this classic Woody Allen comedy—I think the last time I saw it was probably in the late ‘80s sometime.  When I discussed it with Bet on the Hucklebug, we talked about whether or not it was Woody’s first movie, and I was pretty sure Bananas came first.  Turns out I was wrong—Take the Money and Run was indeed his first writer/director/actor film.  Prior to this he wrote/produced What’s Up Tiger Lily, and acted in Casino Royale and What’s New Pussycat?  None of those, I believe, really count as true Woody Allen films.  He also wrote the stage play Don’t Drink the Water.

This may very well be the genesis of the “mockumentary” genre, although what Allen does here is more of a hybird—part spoof of the kind of somber crime documentaries of the day, and part spoof of the crime procedural genre as a whole.  The jokes are deft, swift and very funny—visual gags, wit, slapstick—it’s really all here.  It’s not hard to see why Allen became such a darling of the critics, audiences and Academy all at once.  This is a hell of a debut.

Allen himself is a lot of fun in the lead role of Virgil Starkwell.  I wasn’t overly impressed with Janet Margolin as the romantic lead—I don’t think she was bad, maybe she wasn’t given enough to do, but it was just on the lackluster side.  Fun “Hey It’s That Guy” moment—the warden on the chain gang is played by James Andersen, who I knew was familiar to me.  Finally looked him up—he’s Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Great, fun movie—if you haven’t seen it, see it.  If you’ve seen it, see it again.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

1938, dir. Michael Curtiz, cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia DeHavilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains.

I have often classified To Kill a Mockingbird as the first classic film I ever saw and fell in love with.  I realize now that this is a mistake.  The Adventures of Robin Hood was a staple of my childhood, a frequently-rerun Saturday afternoon classic romp.  I can say with complete honesty that it is as enjoyable now as it was when I was five.  Sure, the costumes are laughable and the historical accuracy is non-existent, but somehow it doesn’t even seem all that dated to me.  It’s everything a good popcorn flick should be—entertaining, funny, action-packed, suspenseful.

I could compare it to its cousin late-‘30s action-adventure flick, Gunga Din.  Gunga Din, while still enjoyable, doesn’t hold up as well to modern audiences because the fight sequences are sped up, prompting inevitable giggles from the viewer.  It looks like a Keystone Kops short.  Robin Hood doesn’t fall into this trap, because the fight scenes are staged better and run at normal speed.  The final sword fight between Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone is thrilling and excellently choreographed.

Flynn was born for roles like these—larger than life, adventurous, witty in the face of danger, etc.  The supporting cast is littered with great supporting character actors from the Golden Age—Basil Rathbone, the incomparable Claude Rains again, Eugene Pallette, Alan Hale Sr., Una O’Connor, etc.  Olivia DeHavilland is also great as the strong and self-reliant Maid Marian.  Classic film fun, highly recommended.

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Enchanted (2007)

2007, dir. Kevin Lima, cast: Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Susan Sarandon.

Fun live-action spoof of classic Disney animated cartoons—all along the way you find gags referencing Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, etc.  But this is a Disney movie itself; the spoofs might have had a bit more bite if someone other than Disney had released the movie.  My friend Bet said (and I’m sure you will be shocked to learn that I agree with her) that Enchanted would have been much more fun if it had been pointed a little more towards adults than kids.  It’s just a little too tame to be a great movie.

What it does have going for it, though, is a fun nostalgia factor, some winning performances, and a great dedication to the classic movie musical tradition.  I have always been taught that in musicals, characters sing and dance when mere talking and walking is not big enough to encompass their emotions—they sing because they have to sing, they dance because they must dance.  Musical sequences are also supposed to advance the plot.  What killed the movie musical was the slow transition to the “plot - stop, sing - resume plot” style.  In most musicals today, people sing because the script says there’s a song there, and that’s it.

Amy Adams is enjoyable to watch in anything, and was very charming here as your typical Disney heroine brought to life.  I also really enjoyed the Disney Prince Charming character writ large, played with reckless abandon by James Marsden.  I thought Patrick Dempsey was a little on the dull side, but then I am not into the whole “McDreamy” thing anyway.  He will always be that dork from Can’t Buy Me Love to me.  It’s a fun romp, see it if you like.  I just thought it could have been a lot better.

Libeled Lady (1936)

1936, dir. Jack Conway, cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, Spencer Tracy.

Previous reviews here, here, and a couple here.  This may well be my most-watched movie since I started keeping a list.

No new review this time around, I’ll just reiterate that I continue to be surprised that such a great movie can have such a weak final ten minutes.  It just unravels.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Casablanca (1942)

1942, dir. Michael Curtiz, cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Paul Henreid.

I’m surprised to learn I’ve never written up any kind of full review of Casablanca on the movieblog before—just little short blurbs like this one.  I suppose the movie deserves better treatment than just a few short sentences, so I’ll try to expand a little in this entry.

As a screenwriter, or as someone with a screenwriting background anyway, I’m perplexed by the success of Casablanca, particularly from a story standpoint.  It was essentially written by committee—three credited writers, one uncredited (but listed on IMDB), also two credited source providers (the playwrights of Everybody Comes to Rick’s). Probably several more studio people had their hands in as well.  The iconic and well-known final scene was not even written until practically the day they shot it.  From the perspective of a writer, this movie shouldn’t work at all!  So why does it?

Its looming legend in classic American cinema hasn’t hurt it—I remember the first time I saw Casablanca (at the Mt. Baker Theatre in Bellingham, WA) being astounded at the number of familiar lines in the movie, lines I never realized were from Casablanca.  The final scene, the goodbye at the airport, is well-known even by people who’ve never seen the movie—a built-in spoiler.  That also makes it a qualifier on my list of great romance pictures—the best ones, I often maintain, are the ones where the couple doesn’t get together in the end.

Casablanca represents everything that was great about the old studio system in Hollywood.  Pictures like this, where the studio engineered the whole movie, didn’t always work.  They work even less now.  But Casablanca turned out to be a perfect storm at Warner Bros.  I will admit that it took me two or three viewings to really appreciate it, but when I watch it now, I most enjoy the performance of Claude Rains, who appears to have as much fun playing Renault as I do watching him.  Favorite scene:  La Marseillaise, of course.

Monday, May 18, 2009

The Visitor (2007)

2007, dir. Thomas McCarthy, cast: Richard Jenkins, Hiam Abbass, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira.

Another quiet, moody and moving character study from writer/director Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent).  McCarthy is an actor’s writer/director, meaning he develops projects with some really nice meaty roles—and I don’t mean movies with lots of scenery-chewing and moments of angsty outbursts, but the type of acting that is infinitely more difficult—keeping the emotions in check and occasionally letting them boil over a bit.  Pete Dinklage and Patricia Clarkson got a number of beautiful moments like that in The Station Agent, and in The Visitor, it’s the wonderful Richard Jenkins who gets a moment to shine.

Jenkins’s character appeals to me because he was the type of protagonist I was always trying to create in film school—a protagonist who doesn’t really want anything, or doesn’t realize he wants anything until he gets it and loses it.  Not a guy who goes seeking the plot, but who has the plot dumped in his lap.  This is a guy who just wants to be left alone.  Jenkins, whose work I have previously enjoyed on Six Feet Under, gives a masterful performance here—subtle and sad, with so much bubbling just under the surface.  His Academy Award nomination was well-justified, but performances like this in movies like this just don’t win those big awards, sadly.

The other performances from Haaz Sleiman, Hiam Abbass and Danai Gurira are also top-notch.  There are some terrific sequences surrounding Jenkins learning to drum which are just enchanting—I’m always a big fan of movies that can integrate music successfully.  While the film is by turns heartbreaking and desperate, it still manages to cling to something hopeful and uplifting.  Remarkable—see it.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

The Public Enemy (1931)

1931, dir. William Wellman, cast: James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods, Joan Blondell, Beryl Mercer.

The Public Enemy is one of the first movies I reviewed for this site, back in March of 2002, before I even had a movieblog (“you have a movieblog?”).  As I recall, it was part of a trifecta of gangster pictures that I reviewed all at once—the others probably being Scarface and Little Ceasar.  It should not come as too much of a surprise to you that I liked this one best—after all, it does have James Cagney in it, at his very best.

Apparently director William Wellman originally cast Edward Woods in the role of Tom Powers and Cagney as his buddy Matt.  Which is why when you watch the early scenes of the two as boys, the smaller scrappier one (Frankie Darro, who does bear a little resemblance to Cagney) grows up to the be the tall, lanky Matt, and the tall lanky boy (Frank Coghlan Jr.) grows up to be short, scrappy Tom (I suspect Coghlan is taller than Cagney, even).

Cagney’s powerhouse performance is enough to overshadow a lot of weaknesses in the film—Donald Cook as Mike Powers is a DUD, just a crashing proseltyzing bore with a complete stone face, devoid of all emotion or humanity.  The character is a bore anyway, but the actor is dullsville.  The movie was produced during that still-awkward transition from silents to talkies, when there was really no such thing as a score, for example, and acting that seems a little split between the old silent style and the new talkie style.  In fact, Cook is a fine example of the kind of acting that may have played very well in a silent film—all stone-faced stares and big arm movements—and Cagney represents the direction talkies were taking—rat-a-tat-tat dialogue, fast-paced motion and naturalistic appeal.

Wellman is one of my favorite directors of the 1930s because he was a total workhorse, he took on any and all projects, from B-pictures to Oscar winners.  He also had a great eye, and he’s not credited for it very often but during the talkie period he really helped develop new ways of looking at movies.  He seemed to be the first guy to get that since we can hear the characters, we don’t necessarily have to see their faces.  That means we can focus on the reactions of others, or obscure faces through shadows or behind objects in order to heighten suspense.  He does a fantastic job here of creating the gangster world and keeping the pace on the move.  Highly recommended if you haven’t seen it—if you have, highly recommended that you see it again!