Track the Films You Watch (2009) (1 Viewer)

[John Stell]

002) 01/02/2009 An American in Paris (1951) :star::star::star: (out of four)

When Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) left the army in 1945, he stayed in Paris to pursue being a successful painter because, “all my life, that’s what I wanted to do.” He’s caught the attention of Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), a wealthy American from Baltimore who resides in Paris and has much influence in the art world. But her interest in him is not strictly professional. One night while Jerry and Milo are out networking, Jerry spots Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron), and falls instantly in love. But she is involved with one of Jerry’s friends, popular cantor Henri Baurel (Georges Guetary), and Henri plans to marry Lise and take her with him when he tours America.

You can probably already guess who ends with whom. The enjoyment of An American in Paris comes from the song and dance sequences featuring Kelly, Caron, Guetary, and/or the American in Paris Ballet. Kelly is as graceful as ever as he performs “Our Love is Here to Stay” and “S Wonderful.” The adorable staging of “I Got Rhythm” has Kelly teaching several French children how to say "I Got," and then have them come in on cue. Lise is introduced to the audience in an inventive dance montage whereby Henri describes Lise’s many traits and moods while Caron dances in various routines with changes in color, costumes, and dance styles. The finale lasts almost twenty minutes, as Jerry imagines himself and Lise together and apart, dancing through the streets of Paris. And Oscar Levant is on hand as an acerbic concert pianist, who’s never had a concert, to provide several laughs.

While it’s easy to enjoy the film today, the character of Jerry is a bit problematic. First, he’s a bit to self-satisfied and overly confident to the point of being a bit obnoxious. He is harsh and rude when dealing with Milo at times. And the way he uses Milo at the end, leading her on, is cruel. Maybe in 1951 this would have passed muster. But today Jerry isn’t a slam dunk in the likeability department. We’re supposed to be rooting for him and Lise to find happiness together. Jerry’s basically a good guy, but he needs to be taught some manners.

Still, An American in Paris it too genial a film to get to upset with old fashioned attitudes. The song and dance numbers work their magic and the film can still put a smile on the face and a spring in the step. But it’s Kelly’s next musical, Singin’ in the Rain (1952), that remains the best showcase for his talents.


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[Michael Elliott]

Reader, The (2008) :star::star::star::star: Stephen Daldry

In post-war Germany a 15-year-old boy (David Kross) has an affair with an older woman (Kate Winslet) and falls in love but weeks later she disappears without a trace. Nearly a decade later the man is in law school when he goes to a war-crime trial and sees that the woman has been brought up on charges. What follows will effect his life through adulthood. A few weeks back I said Slumdog Millionaire was my pick for the best movie of 2008 but that has now changed as this film will take the top spot. I expected a great movie walking into this thing but I never imagined how beautiful and touching a movie experience it would turn out to be. The film deals with a lot of ugly situations and has some downright heartbreaking moments but I love movies with great stories being brought to life with great acting. Hopefully the Oscars will treat this film very kindly because it's certainly in a league of its own. The film's basic story has the adult (played by Ralph Fiennes) looking back at his first sexual relationship and the effects it had on his life and especially his estranged relationship with his own daughter. I think a lot of what happens to a young boy will have a major impact on his life and I think that's the greatest thing about this film. What happens to be boy starting with the affair and leading up to the trials make for some very compelling drama. I'd say this is a brilliant coming of age story but I'm not sure if that would be insulting the film since there's so much more to it. The film also does a great job with its rather frank sex and nudity scenes. There's quite a bit of both but the film is very mature about it considering the age of the two people involved. The subject of the age is never mentioned as the film just treats it as one thing that happens among many others. Both Kross and Winslet were very brave in terms of their sexuality but their brilliant performances are the key here. I expected a great performance by Winslet since she's perhaps the greatest actress working today but Kross stands right there with her through the entire film. I think Kross' performance is the real key here as we're seeing all this stuff from his point a view and it's up to him to sell the story and the emotions behind it. The actor handles the awakening of his sexuality brilliantly and he's even better during the trial time scenes where his judgement is going to have a major impact on several people. Fiennes is brilliant as well in his supporting role playing the adult . He has couple emotional scenes, which I won't ruin but his acting inside the jail cell might be the greatest I've seen from him. This is a pretty depressing film from start to finish but that's often the case when you deal with a subject matter like this one. Director Daldry does a masterful job handling the different time periods and putting them all together. The story jumps around from decade to decade but all of this is handled with a problem. In many ways this is a love story and on that level I think the film hits a grand slam and turns out to be a true masterpiece without a single flaw.

 

[Michael Elliott]

I was hoping you'd write something up on this one when I noticed it on your list earlier today. Needless to say Bergman's THE VIRGIN SPRING is much much better but there is a major cult for Craven's film. I hated the movie with a passion but for some reason I kept going back for more and on my last viewing I actually ended up giving it a good review. Like you said, the movie hits you in the gut and I use to hate the movie because of this but I eventually backed off and said it was good that a movie could hit you that hard. I still wouldn't recommend it to anyone though and I can't help but think how many young girls bought this when they saw SCREAM and noticed this was from the same director. It's easy to see why Craven is ashamed of the film and doesn't want much to do with it.

Not to mention the countless rips that followed. I've probably seen at last fifteen different takes on this story and they actually grew worse with each new one. Roger Ebert hate's slashers yet praised LAST HOUSE, which I never understood. A few years ago a movie named CHAOS came out, which was pretty much a remake but 10x worse in terms of vile stuff. Ebert bashed the hell out of it and then went on a e-mail change with the filmmakers, which people can read at his site.

 

[Jeff Reis]

Apparently not too ashamed as he is producing the upcoming sure-to-be-shit remake...

The Last House on the Left (2009)

Where has he said that he was ashamed of the film? I heard him make a lot of self-deprecating comments about various things in the commentary but I've never heard him say he was ashamed. Not disputing what you're saying, I'd just be interested to read/hear his comments to that affect.

 

[ZacharyTait]

I updated my list with:

The Bank Job (2008)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

 

[Pete York]

Yeah, those guys should've just taken the bad review in stride as a matter of doing business. Because Ebert undressed them. Badly.

 

[Michael Elliott]

I'm not sure where to stand but I think Ebert was out of line. I know he objected to bad guys getting away but this type of thing happens all the time. I personally thought CHAOS was great at what it tried to do. Did it go to far? I'm sure it did but it had a piece of vile trash to go further than.

I once sent Ebert an e-mail asking why he praised LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT as a masterpiece while calling I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE the worst movie ever made and he simply replied by asking me which director had made the most movies. I'm not exactly sure what he meant by that since Jerry Warren made more movies as Stanley Kubrick.

 

[Marc Fedderman]

Hold

 

[Mario Gauci]

Pete,

You must be a mind reader because, for some reason, as I was going to sleep last night, it struck me that I hadn’t mentioned the music (which I knew I had liked) of THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT (1945) in my comments (I don’t dare call them “reviews” anymore!)…but, I guess, that now comes with the territory of my newly self-imposed restrictions on reviewing what I watch over here and, by extension, the IMDb.

 

[Mario Gauci]

Drama Day #1 (or Robert Mulligan Day)


01/03/08: THE SPIRAL ROAD (Robert Mulligan, 1962) :star::star:

Rock Hudson seemed to want to alternate his trademark comedy and action vehicles with more meaningful pieces; this was one of them, but it’s possibly the most wrong-headed he ever embarked upon! Sprawling but heavy-going and overlong, it tells of an atheist doctor’s experiences in Java; from the start, the script makes it known that his motivation wasn’t really compassion for human suffering, but rather to make a name for himself by chronicling the 20-year long research on leprosy by eminent but tough-as-nails medical authority Burl Ives! As expected, the narrative takes an episodic nature – a visit to a leper colony, the unexpected arrival of the hero’s fiancée (Gena Rowlands), a fellow doctor driven to madness and Hudson’s own brush with the dangerous witch doctor (Reggie Nalder!) responsible, Ives’ long-running friendly rivalry with a billiard-playing royal native – complemented by Russell Harlan’s gleaming widescreen photography and Jerry Goldsmith’s rather over-the-top exotic score and obviously culminating in Hudson’s ‘salvation’. While there’s a lot of melodrama going on (threatening the couple’s relationship and the hero’s own professional integrity), the film also features some incongruous injections of comedy (particularly Ives’ deliberate slapsticky disruption of a gala dinner) – but, frankly, it’s at its most unintentionally hilarious when Hudson counters missionary (a completely white-haired Geoffrey Keen!)’s earnest counsel with cynical witticisms and his own unconvincing shaggy appearance when deranged (apparently, this scene even found its way into the opening of the legendary “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” [1969-74] TV comedy series!).


01/03/08: BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL (Robert Mulligan, 1965) :star::star:1/2

This is the kind of film which seems to struggle to find an audience outside of its immediate setting – in its case, the American Deep South. It’s basically a familial drama where husband and wife are driven apart by the former’s troubled persona – especially due to his own inclination to violence and the enigmatic relationship with his eminent but dying guardian. Director Mulligan had created an all-time classic with TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962): this updates the atmosphere (including a failed attempt to replicate the gothic touch associated with Robert Duvall’s Boo Radley character in that film) but still throws in a little girl at the core of the story. Steven McQueen goes through the whole ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ act to little lasting effect – the performance is even more hurt by the fact that, playing a wannabe rockabilly singer, he’s forced to mimic to a number of tunes (including the title number). Similarly, co-stars Lee Remick and Don Murray have typical roles, and John Wayne regular Paul Fix also has a nice bit as a benign Judge. The film notches up some tolerable intensity with scenes where McQueen is beaten up, feverishly tries to dig up the old lady (for whatever purpose) and finally escapes custody – if only for a short while; otherwise, the greatest points of interest here are Ernest Laszlo’s moody cinematography and Elmer Bernstein’s eclectic score.


01/03/08: UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE (Robert Mulligan, 1967) :star::star:1/2

Having watched the film, it seems quite appropriate now that during one of its key sequences, schoolteacher Sandy Dennis is guiding her unruly English literature students through the famously antithetical opening of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale Of Two Cities”. That’s because the sheer glossiness of UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE makes its intended ‘realistic’ portrayal of the American school system self-defeatingly superficial. On the other hand, however, its cliché-ridden narrative – the troubled class punk is truly a highly intelligent individual, a sensitive soul bearing an unrequited love for the school’s playboy-teacher attempts suicide, a painfully shy student finally blossoms into a flamboyant actor, the schoolteacher eventually sticks her neck out for her put-upon students but, ungratefully, almost gets ‘raped’ into the bargain, she is about to quit her job but, naturally, thinks better of it at the end, etc. – is actually what makes it enjoyable viewing. It also helps that Sandy Dennis is very good in the lead, as she herself gains confidence in her dealings with the kids as the film moves along (to Fred Karlin’s playful score).

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Which is probably why I disliked LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, but for different reasons. To me it just wasn't anywhere hear as offensive and upsetting as its reputation suggested. I probably watched many copycats before I rented the Craven film, and it struck me as no big shock by the time I got around to it. The only thing I recall is something effective regarding someone going into the water (it's been at least 18 years since I've seen it).

 

[Joe Karlosi]

True, but you never know. When I bought my first DVD player at launch in March 1997 there were those laserdisc and VHS purists who doubted the same things would ever make it to DVD, and look what happened! But keep in mind that the DVDs of these will be looking good on your new system, so long as you've got the player and resolution set right.

Back to basic movie talk -- I see you're designating a "topic" for each day ("Comedy", "Drama"...). It's my intention this year to attempt a "Theme Week" every week, from Monday through Friday. This is something I always want to do but have never buckled down to. It is also going to be typically difficult because I am usually too lethargic after work on weeknights to make it through a film. I don't intend to begin until tomorrow, since it'll be the start of the first full week of 2009. And to give you a hint of what the theme will be next week -- guess whose 74th birthday it would have been on Jan. 8th?

 

[Dave Gorman]

1/3 / Shutter / 1 / BD :star: :star:

I wonder if the original is any better. The American remakes never seem to capture the creepiness and atmosphere of the Asian originals.

 

[Tarkin The Ewok]

On the last day of 2008, after an analysis of my viewing habits, I cancelled my TV service and opened up a Netflix account. In 2009, I plan on watching many more movies and far less TV on DVD. My first pair of discs arrived on Saturday, and I found time to watch one of them so far.

1/3 Midnight Run (1988): :star::star::star:

This action comedy delivers in most respects, but it also has its share of drawbacks. De Niro, Grodin, and Kotto turn in the best performances, playing the characters mostly straight but still delivering the laughs. The movie has a lot of good setups and payoffs but rarely telegraphs exactly where it is going. Danny Elfman’s music is top-notch throughout, and I love hearing electric guitar over the Universal logo.

I’m not a big fan of excessive profanity in movies. There are certain characters and situations for which it seems more appropriate, but I’d rather have the same intensity of performance with fewer expletives. This movie has too much profanity for my taste. Also, the sniper scene felt completely unbelievable, even for such an absurd chain of events. My final negative point is that the section between the train and Vegas had very little decent comedy.

 

[Sandro]

I also watched this recently and gave it the same score and had pretty much the same reaction. I actually liked the remake for NOT having any of the usual "tricks" like fast editing, jittery camerawork, crazy visuals. Instead it just told the story but it was too predictable.

As for Last House on the Left I feel that the movie does pack a punch and that Craven included much to think about concerning violence and the two different "families" (as he has done in other films). But the movie was ruined by those two bumbling cops - I really hated them. I think Craven did not trust his "horror" instincts and opted to add in some ill-advised "comedy". Virgin Spring is much more impressive.

 

[Sandro]

Kiss Me Deadly :star: :star: :star: 1/2
After watching this outstanding film my New Year's Resolution is to watch more Robert Aldrich. Any recommendations would be welcome - I think the only other one I've seen is Emperor of the North. Anyway this one hits hard - it has the trappings of film noir (private eye, tough women, shadows, staircases, cages/bars) but the sensibility of a tough modern crime drama. Immediately from the start the film creates a heady atmosphere of a world that is not quite right with a woman stumbling along a road at night and then the credits scrolling the wrong way. Sex and violence permeate the film - the torture at the beginning is pretty strong stuff - and Mike Hammer is not the typical hero.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid :star: :star: :star:1/2
I am counting this as a new viewing although I remember seeing it when I was young. This is a very enjoyable entertainment and gets by on the charm of its stars (especially Newman) although some bits go on too long. Funniest part is all the jokes they wring from the necessity of learning Spanish for bank-robbing in Bolivia.

Se7en :star: :star: :star: 1/2
Not much to say - if you like intense well-made thriller/horror movies this is the one to watch.

Ride Lonesome :star: :star: 1/2
I know I should like them more but I still cannot really get into the Scott/Boetticher Westerns. There is a lot to admire mainly in the simplicity and subtlety of story and style but they always leave me unsatisfied for some reason. I think that Scott's character does not really resonate with me. I have seen four now and the only one I really liked was Seven Men From Now.

Black Book (1949) :star: :star: :star:
One of a kind Anthony Mann/John Alton film that uses film noir techniques for a story set during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. There are no epic scenes with hundreds of extras just a succession of small scale scenes in an exciting if initially confusing tale. This needs a good DVD treatment as the print from TCM is just serviceable.

Orpheus (1950) :star: :star: :star: 1/2
Jean Cocteau's update of the Orpheus story becomes a wonderful fantasy story of a poet who is visited by death and has to fight to bring his wife back to this world after her death.

 

[Michael Elliott]

I really haven't made a big deal out of it because I really don't see it as a big deal. To date I really don't see what all the hype is about as there are very few titles on Blu that I'd actually own. So far the ones I've bought are those that were "upgraded" on SD but I never bought. The Kubrick titles, JFK and a few others. The quality is certainly better (not in all cases) but I'm not rebuying everything. The Fox issues are making me think about taking the thing back.

I've had a PS3 for a while but didn't buy any discs. My mother got me a HDTV for Christmas and my girlfriend ended up getting me a Blu-ray player so that's pretty much how it got into it.

 

[Pete York]

01/04/09

The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938) Dir: Mitchell Leisen
Production: Paramount Pictures

The fourth and last in the series of 'Big Broadcast' musicals from Paramount, this one most notable for Bob Hope's feature debut, wherein a variety of musical acts do their thing while a paper-thin plot attempts to go on around them. The story here has something to do with toy boats racing across a tub (the models are really bad), or rather two luxury ocean liners racing each other to see who can complete the Atlantic crossing in the best time. About 5 minutes of the movie is devoted to this.

Of course the highlight is Hope and co-star Shirley Ross' sublime performance of Rainger and Robin's 'Thanks for the Memory', which won an Oscar® for best original song and became Hope's theme. W.C. Fields does some decent shtick playing an eccentric shipping tycoon and his twin brother. I couldn't decide whether Martha Raye was annoying or whether she brought some needed energy. Regardless, she was a good sport, on the receiving end of jokes about her big mouth and a gag about how ugly she was, as well as getting practically brutalized in a musical number (which was entertaining I must say). Dorothy Lamour and Leif Erickson round out the cast in a dreary romantic subplot. In one of the 'specialty acts', Leon Schlesinger provides the animation as an anthropomorphic water bubble (?) interacts with bandleader Shep Fields. The big, flashy final number isn't exactly a show-stopper, especially when compared with some of the 'Broadway Melody' pictures of the time.

Some of the gags are just awful, but the film rises to mediocrity thanks to one moment of genius.

:star: :star: out of 4

MITCHELL LEISEN - "Lightly Likable"
01/04/09: The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938) :star: :star:

Like others, I'm also tinkering with a more structured viewing regiment, while also leaving room for improvisation. Using Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema as a launch point, I'm going to try to do blocks of a director at a time or just keep track of what I see from directors in the book. I'm trying to train myself to consider a director's whole body of work, rather than seeing each film as a separate element. Macro vs. micro, you might say (I'm really trying to avoid using 'auteur' here). So, we'll see. Post format will be toyed with, and some kind of tally will be in each one. And the directors will be identified by the category Sarris puts them in. It's all needlessly complex and way too ambitious for me.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Teenage Monster (1958) :star::star:

A Fourth of July sparkler (which is supposed to substitute for a meteorite) crashes down on an old 1880s western town, killing a woman's husband and injuring her little boy. Seven years later, mom (Anne Gwynne) is saddled with a mangy hulking moron of a son who has been rendered illiterate due to the accident, and who gets out to kill people every so often. This "teenage monster" is played by 50-ish Gil Perkins, who was a stuntman for Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man in the 1940s, and was actually 10 years older than Anne Gwynne, who plays his mother!

Despite the nature of this film, Gwynne gives it more than it deserves (though she hated the movie so much that it was the last one she ever made), but the best performance comes from Gloria Castillo. Gloria plays a bitchy waitress who blackmails mom into paying her off or else she'll spill the beans that it's her monstrous son who's been doing all the killing around town. This is painless monster movie cheese, but the funniest thing about it is that originally it was felt the monster spoke too articulately for someone who was supposed to be brain damaged, and so Gil Perkins came back to loop in a bunch of whimpers and silly noises. What's humorous is that in the finished product it still appears that Anne Gwynne and Gloria Castillo are able to decipher his every grunt.



Private School (1983) :star::star::star:

OK, this one's a nostalgic kick of mine. I was 21 years old when it hit theaters, and I had fallen in love with Phoebe Cates after seeing her in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH the previous year. She's gorgeous throughout PRIVATE SCHOOL, but she's got some serious competition from the equally stunning "bad girl" Betsy Russell, who plays her sexy rival in this gratuitous teen sex comedy. No apologies necessary here -- this is just an all-out "guys want to get into girls pants" farce, and it's one of the "best" of the so-called "Eighties Sexploitation Genre", as far as they go. Male students from a nearby academy for men try to crash a private school for girls to get their young rocks off. It's that simple.

PRIVATE SCHOOL's got a good '80s music score, some funny scenes, and a lot of T&A (and even some C) on display for every red-blooded American male to gawk at. Also -- clueless and victimized teachers, stuffy parents, school pranks -- the usual formula, which is what we're there for. But in addition there's at least one respectable angle with "good girl" Cates being in love with Matthew Modine and their plans to "do it" for the first time, the right way, in a romantic getaway. Ray Walston, who was so memorable as Mr. Hand in FAST TIMES, returns in a small but welcome part as a perverted chauffer. If you know what to expect and it's what you're looking for, dive in. If you don't go for this sort of thing, don't waste your (and my) time watching and whining about it.


Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928) :star::star::star:

I can't say I am surprised by Lon Chaney's fine performance here, as he impresses me with every film I see of his for the first time. Here he plays a clown named Tito, who comes across an abandoned little girl one day and decides to take her in and bring her up, naming her Simonetta. As the years progress, Simonetta develops into a beautiful young woman (Loretta Young) and Tito begins to fall in love with her. Problem is, so too has a young Count, with whom Tito must compete. But the magic is that we get to see Chaney's heart being broken even though he has to work as a laughing and joyful clown while crying on the inside. I wouldn't say the movie is exeptional, but it's got sentiment and Chaney is very good. I found Loretta Young to be quite attractive, but I later discovered she was only 14 at the time.

You know, I'm surprised more people haven't talked about the incestuous implications of a film like this one, considering that the Chaney character was more or less the girl's "father". Not that I mind, you understand; these things occur, and it's not like the girl was Tito's own flesh and blood. Now, I wonder why people didn't cut Woody Allen the same slack?

 

[ZacharyTait]

I've updated my list with Dear Zachary: A Letter to his Son about his Father.

Equally maddening, sad and ultimately uplifting, it's a brilliant documentary about a man telling the story of another man to his son who wasn't born when his father was killed. I don't dare reveal what happens towards the end, but it's shocking, but not surprising, considering what we know what has happened already.

How the Academy eliminated this from the shortlist so early, I don't want to know.