AFI 100 Years Series Discussion & Challenges, vol. 2 - Page 16

Lew Crippen · 07-23-2008, 04:23 PM

Don't know why,
There's no sun up in the sky;
Stormy weather.
Since my man and I ain't together,
Keeps raining all the time…
The Time.

Life is bare,
Gloom and misery everywhere;
Stormy weather.
Just can't get my poor self together,
It's Rainin’ all the time…
The time.

The title song in the 1943 movie Stormy Weather, sung this time by Lena Horne, originally by Ethel Waters and subsequently by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday to Frank Sinatra, the song has its rightful place in the movie. A movie filled with (what are now) standards such as Ain’t Misbehavin’ and I Can’t Give You Anything But Love. Besides headliners Lena Horne and Bill Robinson this all black movie has luminaries like Cab Calloway and Fats Waller, but the highlight is the show-stopping finale featuring Calloway’s music and band and the jaw-dropping dancing of the Nicholas Brothers.

Otherwise the plot, screenplay and production are about par for a musical of the era, but one that should be seen by those unfamiliar with such movies from that time.

Lew Crippen · 07-24-2008, 09:53 PM

Because it struck me, um, how neatly 'three' went into this figure: 210,000. That means I would keep seventy.

Frank Gavin (Paul Newman) can keep the $70K or his integrity. As one would suspect of the down and out, alcoholic lawyer he portrays in The Verdict, he keeps his integrity and brings the case to trial.

Newman is first rate in his role, as are Jack Warden as his sidekick and James Mason as his opponent. Special mention for Charlotte Rampling who is both the love interest and the betrayer—and kudos to the script that lets her final phone call ring and ring and ring.

Lew Crippen · 07-26-2008, 11:39 PM

I hope that every boy and girl in the whole world is as happy as me.

Proclaims Heidi at the end of the movie that brings icon child star Shirley Temple and the iconic children’s book together. Much better than similar efforts, there is almost enough substance to cut through Heidi’s (and Temple’s) indefatigable pluck to make a real story—but not quite. Arthur Treacher has no trouble stealing every scene—and one supposes that the writers in a bit of protest give him all the best lines.

Lew Crippen · 07-30-2008, 07:54 PM

Marriages may come and go, but the game must go on.

Felix Unger (Jack Lemmon) promises to be back next Friday night as he moves in (along with his new-found confidence) with the Pigeon sisters in The Odd Couple, taken from the Neil Simon play of the same name. Walter Matthau is predictably grumpy as Oscar Madison, the other half of the mismatched couple and both deliver very fine performances—but not so good as the material suggests. A funny and sometimes very funny movie that somehow never hits the homerun the material provides.

Lew Crippen · 08-05-2008, 04:36 PM

Dick: I had you figured for a natural born killer.
…
So why did you kill him?

Perry: No special reason—I just felt like it.

Dick: That’s the best reason there is.

So goes the discussion as Perry Smith (Robert Blake) and Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson) plan a home invasion, robbery and the killings of an entire family in In Cold Blood, a movie taken from Truman Capote’s non-fictional novel of the same name. Certainty not a perfect movie, it makes me think of German Expressionism meeting New Journalism. Nonetheless, the plain, flat landscapes matches well the dull existence of the protagonists and the movie’s power remains today.

Lew Crippen · 08-05-2008, 05:09 PM

Galloway: Are you planning on doing any investigating, or are you just going to take the guided tour?

Kaffee: I'm pacing myself.

Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) has been pacing himself apparently for his entire life and is ready to plea-bargain his clients without having met them or read the case. And this is fitting in a movie that also takes an easy path. A Few Good Men is the very definition of a big, studio movie with a cast of stars: Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Pollak, directed by Rob Reiner and with a script by Aaron Sorkin (who wrote the play of the same name).

But even with this assemblage of high powered creativity, the movie often loses focus, never seeming to be sure what story it is trying to tell: it might be a (late) coming of age, it might be a philosophical investigation of competing ethics, it might be a courtroom drama combined with a mystery, or it might even be a love story—but wait that never quite gets off the ground. What it is, is Perry Mason in uniform, dragging the truth out of a tough Marine officer at the last minute.

Sorkin’s screenplay seems to be the main culprit—so much so that even William Goldman (credited as a consultant) could not reconcile all of the elements.

Still the cinematography is mostly very good and most of the acting is above par, leaving us a movie that can be enjoyed so long as one does not think about it very much.

Lew Crippen · 08-06-2008, 11:30 AM

I’ve given you the finest education in Europe. You’re not able to do anything.

Houseboat is a reasonably typical ‘boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl’ comedy of the 50s. Cary Grant is his usual charming and urbane self as the boy (although he is not so good when in uncomprehending father mode) and Sophia Loren is the girl for whom any boy would fall. Martha Hyer provides the third side of the triangle and Harry Guardino steals most of his scenes as the second banana.

Pretty routine, but the cast and the ending where Grant and Loren have more to overcome than is usual make this one worth watching.

Lew Crippen · 08-07-2008, 01:03 PM

…when the devil cannot reach us through the spirit—he creates a woman beautiful enough to reach us though the flesh.

In this case the woman in Flesh and the Devil is Greta Garbo (Felicitas), the very essence of a temptress, and although she gets second billing to John Gilbert (Leo von Harden) in this movie, it is most probably the last time her name was not at the top of the marquee.

True enough the movie is melodrama, but for me, melodrama of a high order. While some of Clarence Brown’s direction seems a bit stiff (especially in comparison to the later Anna Christie), the cinematography could serve as a class for today’s students. For example, during the first part of the movie we only see standard (of the era) shots with no camera movement, the only changes in the editing. But when the lovers meet for the first time, the camera follows them waltzing gracefully.

A movie that manages to overcome its faults and that today also needs to overcome its premise—but what an opportunity for Garbo to personify the point. And as an aside, it is interesting to note that the moviemakers of that era must have thought that much of their audience appreciated the irony of the lady’s name.

Lew Crippen · 08-25-2008, 01:44 PM

Don’t you just find books so terribly decorative?

Inquires the superficial intended of the grown-up ward of Auntie Mame in the movie, book and play of the same name. At the time this won a ton of awards, but this movie has neither the charm nor the bite of Patrick Dennis’ semi-autobiography. Worth watching for Rosalind Russell and Peggy Cass and her over-the-top performance.

Adam_S · 08-25-2008, 09:41 PM

I thought Auntie Mame was pretty over the top, but I didn't think the whole film was as good as the initial bit with the young boy. I would say Mame gets a bit tiresome by the end of the film, as fun as the performance is, it is a bit too much.

Lew Crippen · 09-06-2008, 02:57 PM

Who was the best test pilot I ever knew? There was one who had the right stuff…

Astronaut Gordon Cooper tries to answer a query from the press, but is cut off as they are not really interested in the real answer. Unfortunately, director Philip Kaufman never really lets us know what the elite test pilots think is The Right Stuff either in his movie of the same name. But this is otherwise a very fine movie, filled with very fine performances.

And one of the finest is screenwriter Sam Shepard as legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager, who was not chosen (so the screenplay states) as an astronaut b