Change Your Image
Henry-59
Reviews
Shall We Dance (1937)
The most touching of all of Fred and Ginger's collaborations
There's a lot to like about "Shall We Dance," from the scene in the Art Deco boiler room to that wordless dance that Fred and Ginger do to "Walking the Dog," but my favorite is Fred's farewell to Ginger in "They Can't Take That Away From Me." George and Ira wrote this knowing that George was dying, which turns a great song into a classic.
Mission to Moscow (1943)
Wreckers and saboteurs
The flaws in this film are gigantic and obvious. The scenes of the show trials, to take one example, not only falsify history, but come off as so flat and awkward as to make it impossible to believe any of the confessions. Which makes me wonder: was this just bad writing by an otherwise gifted screenwriter or deliberate sabotage?
We know this much: that Davies had final script approval. It shows: he is in every scene and given the last word on every subject. You can imagine him standing over Howard Koch's shoulder, insisting on rewriting this scene and adding extra touches to another. All this must have been maddening to a professional writer at the pinnacle of his career.
Which leads to my pet theory: that Koch exacted his revenge by making Davies look like a fool. While the film may appear to be painting Davies in a positive light – it would be hard for him not to be at least likable with Walter Huston playing him – a closer viewing depicts him not only as naïve and gullible, but also self-centered and vain.
What else do we make of those scenes – and they keep recurring – in which various Soviet figures tell Davies how insightful, open and honest he was? Davies, of course, never disagrees, but instead launches into another speech in which he assures his friends that he will tell America or the world what's really going on in the Soviet Union. Whether Davies realized it or not, the film shows him as someone who only needs to be tickled under the chin in order to be seduced.
Which brings us back to the show trial scenes. Bukharin did as much as he could to defeat Vyshinsky by admitting as much as he had to in order to save his family but denying whatever else he could, while dropping broad hints that none of what he was saying was true. Koch's script does something similar: the confessions of Radek, Bukharin, Yagoda and the rest sound canned and unconvincing and the defendants themselves look more like defeated party functionaries than conspirators. Which is, of course, the truth—it's just not advertised as such.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Miscast and misdirected
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
I've read the book and seen the series, which might be a drawback in appreciating this version. But there were so many things wrong with it that made it a huge disappointment:
1. As others have noted, Benedict Cumberbatch was at least a decade too young to play Guillam and lacked a certain thuggishness that made his attempts to play that role look forced. To my American eyes he looked more like a clerk behind the counter at a Starbucks.
2. Toby Jones likewise was all wrong as Percy Alleline: too timid, too awkward and (pardon me) too short to be a bureaucratic intriguer. And, while I did not travel in those circles in the early 70s (or at any other time), I would have assumed that a functionary would have suppressed his Scottish accent in favor of something more Oxbridgean. Jones looked like he was trying out for the role of Yezhov in some other movie.
3. Colin Firth cannot compete with Ian Richardson, who evoked Kim Philby just by his looks and manner; Firth would have done better as Guy Burgess. Richardson gave us a layered performance; Firth's was completely forgettable.
4. Ciarán Hinds did not look remotely like a leftish academic. And, yes, I know that we don't have to stereotype every character by physical appearance, but can we at least make some sort of bow toward the characters in the book? At any rate, as far as the movie was concerned he might as well have been a piece of furniture.
5. The violence (or, more accurately, the graphic display of torn human flesh and blood that represented violence that had taken place off screen) was not merely gratuitous, but tacky. It only underscored the fact that the director had no handle on the narrative and used these showpieces to substitute for what the series emphasized--what the characters did not know or knew but did not tell.
6. Those tears in that scene nearly at the end of the movie.
The series was engrossing, the movie was boring,
Rejoice and Shout (2010)
Too long, but too short too
I have a few points to add to tlsnyder42-1's thoughtful commentary: First, the film tried to cover too much in too short a time. I think the coverage was fairly well balanced between jubilee/hard gospel/choir, chose the right persons to focus on and has some wonderful clips, but I also felt as if it could have said and shown so much more. A shame to leave out Dorothy Love Coates, Alex Bradford, the Davis Sisters, Roberta Martin, etc. It would be wonderful if someone were willing to turn this into a four part series, similar to Ken Burns' Jazz or that collection of films on the blues.
On the other hand, it could have been edited a little more smartly. While I liked the commentaries, I think the film could have done without Smokey Robinson altogether and would have benefited from some editing of others' comments (it's the Ohio, not the Mississippi, that was the boundary between slavery and freedom--just look where Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri and Texas are). While I can't tell you what to cut, I can say it dragged a bit. But those clips of the Hummingbirds and the Silvertones, plus the footage of believers slain in the spirit are revelatory. Worth being included with the other documentaries on the same theme.
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Images, words and ideas
[Possible spoilers ahead]
I am one of those who neither hated nor loved this movie. The best thing about it is the Big Idea that Moore wants us to understand that it is a crime to send working class kids to fight a war on the basis of the lies about WMDs and terrorism that the Bush Administration peddled for a year and a half after September 11th. Moore is actually fairly low-key in pushing this point, even though he says it as straightforwardly as possible at the end of the movie, because he doesn't (for the most part) hit us over the head with the cute ironies, embarrassing images and heavy sarcasm he is so prone to use otherwise. Even the Marine recruiters, like the sheriff in Roger and Me who made a living out of evicting the unemployed, come off as people doing their job in an unjust system.
Moore sets up his argument with the unsensitized pictures of what bombing and occupation mean on the ground in Iraq something we almost never see in the U.S. media. While we still do not get close to the Iraqis in these scenes, given the distances created by language and culture, or even to the American soldiers, thanks to Moore's scrapbook approach to telling his story, we do get a few minutes to see what this sort of hell is like. And that makes his point that much more powerful when he brings the story home to Flint, to the VA hospital and to Lila Lipscomb's kitchen. (As for the commenter who told her to shut up, what is it about her grief that you can't bear to watch?)
The problem is that Moore weighs down this message with a lot of tendentious arguments about Unocal's plans for a pipeline, the departure of Saudi nationals on September 13th, and other debatable points. It isn't enough for Moore to point out the criminality (in moral terms at least) of Halliburton and others getting rich off the war; Moore needs to find a scandal, one that will make the war a federal crime as well. That causes him to fixate on Bush and the Bush family's relations with the House of Saud. I had a hard time seeing what the point was: we know we are in close alliance with the Saudis, but how does that explain why we went into Afghanistan, or why we waited four weeks to bomb Afghanistan, or why we invaded Iraq? Moore doesn't offer any explanation and I don't think he's got one.
Bush is a great target. Moore desperately wants to defeat him this November. And he probably could not have sold as many tickets if he had not skewered him so frequently and so well. But this would have been a better film if Moore had stuck to the point he really wanted to make.
They Were Expendable (1945)
A great film inside another one
There are two films here, one wrapped around the other. The one that begins and ends the film is breezy, action-oriented, mostly shot outdoors. Better than Sands of Iwo Jima, but other than that fairly average WWII fare, even taking into account the fact that it is a largely accurate retelling of a tremendous defeat.
The other film is mostly shot inside, either in the hospital or at social events, and is far darker and more moving. While Ford gives us some of his standard hokum, such as the trio hiding underneath the cottage, this section looks much harder at death, defeat and helplessness.
The indoor setting is key, Ford had shot in shadows before, as in Grapes of Wrath, and he did again in My Darling Clementine. But the scenes in the hospital are even more evocative: they remind us that the war has only begun and that the worst lies ahead. And while some commentators have complained that this movie is too slow, in this section the slow pace makes the feeling of imminent loss that much more poignant. I'm thinking in particular of the scene when Donna Reed does her hair in the mirror before coming to the table. Here we not only get to feast our eyes, along with the officers waiting at the table a few feet away, at the impossibly beautiful Donna Reed, but we get a sense of what a struggle it must have been to try to maintain any sort of normal life in wartime.
I don't suppose it would be possible to have sustained this note throughout the movie--no string quartet can be all adagio--but I wish the bookend sections had measured up to the middle section.
Mars Attacks! (1996)
Overlooked masterpiece
Mars Attacks! is a great film. With the exception of Nicholson and Short, every star turned in wonderful performances, particularly Pierce Brosnan, who gave us a droll pipe-smoking performance, and O'Lan Jones, who showed us why we need to keep a gun in the house. And after watching it for the tenth time I finally discovered Jack Black, underplaying his part for the first and last time.
Other things you learned from this movie and nowhere else: what the universal sign of the doughnut is, what Martians mean when they say we come in peace, etc. Finally, no other movie could ever send up Colin Powell as neatly as this one did; his career as Secretary of State only confirms everything that the Warfield character said and did.
Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)
A postcard, rather than a movie
There is one detail in this movie that actually rings true: when one of our hero's traveling companions rejects the gushy, purple prose in the postcard she wrote for him. If only the screenwriter/director/producer had gotten the point. Enthusing about picturesque Italians and Italian landscapes is no substitute for a story with characters who actually struggle with decisions and actually change in the process. That isn't to say that the movie doesn't try to show its hero changing, but those changes turn out to be pretty shallow and utterly predictable.
Would anyone have made this movie (or paid good money to see it) if our hero had been named Francis and his life-changing discovery is that he should forget his ex, move to Italy, and live in a big house in a small community with his old and new friends around him? I don't begrudge our hero any of those pleasures--I wouldn't mind living in Cortona either--but I don't see why we would make a movie about it.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Anachronisms
Other reviewers have said enough about this wonderful witty heist movie that surprised me every step of the way with how good it was. Two things bother me about this movie, however.
First, why did they only ask for $1,000,000? I know that things were cheaper then--I was a productive member of society, sort of, at the time--but even so, $250,000 a pop seems like too little reward for all the time and risk they invested in their plan. Even one of the passengers held hostage thought it wasn't enough--why didn't that occur to the merc or the wise guy?
Second, how did the makers of this movie know that Ed Koch was going to be mayor of New York? It was 1974 and Abe Beame--who would not have made an interesting character if you had put him in platform shoes and hot pants--was Mayor of New York, yet somehow the makers of this film got someone who looks and acts more like Koch than the Mayor in Ghostbusters. Eerier than crop circles
Der Dibuk (1937)
The Lost World
This movie is, in a loose sense, a ghost story with a familiar theme: malevolent fate works through human passions, destroying our protagonists, who do not realize until too late what lies ahead. A fine melodrama, no matter how creaky the production might be. What makes it even more poignant, however, is the historical context. This world, which was fading already when the story was first written, was wiped out entirely by Hitler's Endlösung shortly after the movie was made. The film functions as a ghost story in more ways than one.
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Spielberg's tribute to 400 Blows
Okay, I'll accept that this is a stretch: if it hadn't been for the scene in which our hero discovers his mother's infidelity, then it would never have occurred to me.
But the similarities go beyond that: this is another film about a young man, abandoned in a sense by his parents, fascinated by the adult world but
unprepared for adult life, who slides into a life of deception.
What's different? First and foremost, the happy ending. It's the truth, I suppose, and it's what we want, in that Abagnale is a likeable, very competent young
man, who succeeds where Doinel failed.
Unfortunately that happy ending also negates what we see about this boy who
wants to be anybody but himself. While he didn't need to remake The Grifters, a little less sunniness at the end might have made a much better movie.
Redes (1936)
Not a great movie, but great nonetheless
This is not a great movie: the characters are made out of cardboard, the plot is standard "Waiting for Lefty" with a heavier emphasis on historical materialism, and some of the actors are barely that. But it is still worth seeing, for two reasons: Paul Strand's beautiful pictures and Silvestre Revueltas' beautiful score.
Strand was not cut out to be a cinematographer: his shots are as static as a still photo. Not surprising, considering that Strand was one of the greatest photographers of the last century. You can see how much he loved taking the portraits of clouds, the sea, and the fishermen who are the heroes of this film-which doesn't make a good movie, but is still a delight to watch. As for Revueltas' score, someone who knows more about music will have to comment on it. It is enough to say that it is powerful, not overstated, and modern. He apparently wrote much of the score before the movie was finished, so it doesn't have the interplay with the film itself that Herrmann's score for Vertigo or Fumio Hayasaka's score for Seven Samurai does. But it is still wonderful, particularly if you hear it played by a good orchestra.
Dante's Inferno (1924)
Scrooge's Inferno
It may not be possible to bring the Inferno to the screen: too much depends on Dante's poetry, not to mention familiarity with all of the classical and contemporary references that mean so much to the poet's journey. But the people who made this film didn't even try; instead, they gave us a version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, with a little diluted Sinclair Lewis thrown in, relocated in 1920's America. Yes we do get some scenes from the Inferno, but all the drama of the original has been drained from them: the lustful appear to be merely lounging around in a reddish scene, instead of being caught up in a whirlwind, while the suicides are now thorny bushes with heads, which simply look ridiculous.
But the question remains: could we do better with modern special effects? The danger is that the effects could be too good--Bertran de Born swinging his head like a lantern, Mohammed and the other schismatics split nearly in half, suicides turned into brambles, thieves turned into lizards--leaving the impression that the Inferno is just a series of freak shows, and giving too little importance to the transformation of Dante as he journeys through Hell. Good luck to anyone who tries.
61* (2001)
Sloppy, self-indulgent
Billy Crystal has copied all of the worst features of movies, such as "A League of Their Own," that let sentimentality overwhelm what might have been an interesting story in someone else's hands. The gloppy music, the flashbacks, the cardboard characters all make this movie a waste of two hours and ten minutes. The use of slow motion at the end was painful and those closing notes were trite.
Has there ever been a good baseball movie? "A League of Their Own" was entertaining, but sticky sweet. "Bang The Drum Slowly" didn't quite measure up to the book. "Field of Dreams" was manipulative and corny [no pun intended]. And that's not even counting monstrosities like "The Babe Ruth Story" or Ronald Reagan as Grover Cleveland Alexander. I haven't seen the Hank Greenberg documentary, but it appears to me that there simply is not enough in the game to make a decent drama out of. Ken Burns' nine-part documentary proves the point.
The Art of Amália (2000)
More of a scrapbook than a documentary
I have been a fan of Amalia Rodrigues for about ten years, completely taken by her voice, her presence and the poetry of fado. This documentary does showcase her beautiful voice--and her fabulously dramatic looks--while giving a chronology of her many accomplishments over more than fifty years.
But I have to confess that I was a little disappointed in this film as well. While it does give us a few insights into her life, in particular the deep depression that she fell into in the mid-70's, it leaves out most of her personal life and all of the political controversies that surrounded her. While I can understand her reluctance to put all of her life on display, I wish the film makers had coaxed her into revealing even a little more.
Even so, the movie is a great introduction to her fiercely beautiful singing. Having seen her sing I now realize how much I have missed by merely listening to her in the past. By all means go see for yourself.
The 39 Steps (1935)
Sly wit, but moving too
After hearing a summer of bad political speeches, I went back to The 39 Steps to listen to Hannay's impromptu speech on the hustings. It's all doubletalk, but the opposite of what that usually means: when Hannay apologizes for not recognizing that they were talking about him when he was introduced, what he says sounds insincere, but turns out to be true. The rest of his speech continues this trick brilliantly, as he tells the audience how happy he is to be before them, how he feels safe standing on the podium, etc.
But what is remarkable is how his speech becomes truly moving oratory as it picks up momentum. Maybe it's the reaction of the audience, maybe it's Donat's earnestness, but as Hannay begins to talk about a world in which no one is unjustly accused, no one is hunted, no nation plots against nation, I find myself wanting to hear more. Then it ends as the crowd surges forward.
He may be no more sincere than Marc Antony at Caesar's grave, but we want to believe him. A good antidote to all of the good and bad political oratory we are forced to absorb every four years.
What Lies Beneath (2000)
The audience laughed [spoiler]
While I'm glad that the people who have raved about this movie enjoyed it, I thought it was one of the laziest and most predictable movies of the last few years--not counting Mel Gibson movies, of course. Let's take the end of the movie--a series of cliches [the villain lunging out of nowhere, the desperate struggle in which our hero/ine always prevails] joined together with some of the silliest plot contrivances known to man. The only saving grace about this movie was an audience that laughed at all of the absurd plot developments and cliched dialogue for the first hour or so. But even they had become dispirited by the end--after two hours of this tripe we only wanted it to end, and couldn't care less who drowned and who survived.
As for those people who think this was "Hitchcockian," they must mean Family Plot or Torn Curtain. Hitchcock knew how to keep a story moving--Zemeckis does not. And the thefts from Bernard Hermann were shameless.
L'année dernière à Marienbad (1961)
My legs still hurt
I am not qualified to comment on this film, since I left it only halfway through when watching it nearly thirty years ago. But that half of a movie was memorable, because I do not recall any other movie even remotely as boring, to the point that I suffered physical pain simply from watching it. Artists may have to suffer, but do audiences need to as well?
The Hard Way (1991)
A Classic Screwball Comedy for the 90's
It is easy to play manic characters, but much harder to do it with intelligence and charm. Woods unable to articulate what he is thinking is as funny as Cary Grant was when he did this schtick sixty years ago. We not only sympathize with Woods but we want him to be as furious and tormented as he is: he not only carries the film, but makes Michael Fox's imitation of him funny. Hard to say why this film wasn't a hit, other than the fact that it is really a comedy, not an action comedy.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Don't forget Terry Southern
Dr. Strangelove is probably the best comedy of the 1960's, possibly the best black comedy ever and certainly Kubrick's best film. But we need to give credit where credit is due: Terry Southern is the person who gave us General Ripper's fixation with bodily fluids and Colonel "Bat" Guano's certainty that Mandrake was a prevert of some sort. In lesser hands all of this might have come off as infantile, but giving Kubrick all the credit is simply unfair.
M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931)
So much more sophisticated than films of its time, or today
What I found astonishing about this film, after seeing it for the first time in thirty years, is how far ahead it is, not only of other films of its time, but of present day films as well. The basement trial scene illustrates just how unsentimental this film is: rather than letting us (or the killer) off easy by telling us what to think, Lang keeps jerking us between pleas for mercy, requests for legality, and demands for vengeance, without making any of them obviously more "right" than the other. Lorre's performance is, moreover, not only brilliant, but believable--enough to draw our sympathy without letting us forget just what it is he has done. An amazing accomplishment for 1931. And an amazing one for 1999 as well. Compare M to Silence of the Lambs, which was, in the final analysis, a movie about a freak show monster and another killer, who was given characteristics, but no personality. Lambs looked on the FBI crime lab's investigative prowess with all the critical detachment of a groupie and set its story in a never-never land of politics that meant nothing to anyone in the real world. M, on the other hand, set its story in something like real world Berlin, with a political commentary that, whatever Lang meant, was still subversive enough to raise the Nazis' suspicions. And finally the look of the movie--expressionism that looks modern, film noir without the palm trees. A beautiful, brilliant movie.
The Silver Chalice (1954)
No more cocktail skirts for Paul
It is amazing that Paul Newman's career survived this movie. He reads his lines like they were a list of ingredients of a box of cereal; he moves like an old man; and he seems to be ignoring the rest of the cast for most of the movie. Unlike Samson and Delilah, a GOOD bad movie, in which Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr make preposterous dialogue and silly plot devices seem almost operatic, this movie has a sour, "aren't you sorry you made me do this" quality. While it is easy to understand why Newman refused to do any more Biblical epics (or, as he put it, any more movies in which he had to wear a cocktail skirt), did he have to give such a sullen, cardboard performance?
Zazie dans le métro (1960)
Excruciatingly bad
This movie is not only not funny, but clumsy, stupid, and irritating. We have found, however, that it does serve one purpose: we use it as a way to get our son to behave, by threatening to make him watch it.
Retreat, Hell! (1952)
An insomniac's delight
The local Fox channel in Los Angeles must have harbored a cell of fans of Retreat, Hell!, because it seemed as if they showed this film at least once a month in the hours between 2 and 5 a.m. I was hooked after one viewing, although I know I came in somewhere in the middle; it was some time before my erratic sleep patterns fell into synch with the program schedule. I can't recommend it too highly--it is a tribute to all cliches of all war movies to that date, without the distraction created by interesting characters, plot or technical skill. Watch it again and again and you'll understand.
Braveheart (1995)
The worst, not the best, movie of the year
Another bloated film that gets all the history wrong, turns all of the characters into stick figures and makes piles of money for the star. The Babe Ruth Story was more accurate. At least it gave the Irish Army something to do.