Amy's Classic Movie Blog - Now with Jessica Added!

Bell Book and Candle (1958)

2011-09-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

When watching a classic movie marathon, it may be advisable for me to stop when the movies switch from black and white to color. Or maybe just to skip overly dramatic movies involving witches.
Gillian (Kim Novak) is a bored witch who longs to experience "normal" life. Especially after running into her neighbor Shep (James Stewart). Despite her aunt's attempts to persuade her to use magic to make Shep hers, Gillian is adamant that she will not mess with his life. She holds strong only until she realizes that he is about to marry her college nemesis. A little humming to her cat, and Shep falls madly in love with Gillian. Drama ensues. Would he really love her without tricks? Is he really going to publish a book that exposes witches as real? Is her warlock brother (played by Jack Lemmon) really providing the author of the book with information? Will anyone forgive her for stopping the book from being published? Will Shep still love her if she tells him the truth about herself? Will she ever learn to cry? And the drama goes on...

One star. I'm not sorry I watched it, but it did not quite help me to forget that I was running a 99.9 degree fever, and I really don't need to see this again. I did learn that after making this movie James Stewart asked not to be paired with young starlets as romantic interests anymore. It was starting to feel creepy. Good for him. This is a lesson that Cary Grant never learned. The movie also made me reminisce about Veronica Lake's funny I Married a Witch (1942). I would definitely see that again.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

2011-09-05T11:53:00.000-07:00

The Shop Around the Corner is wonderful enough as a funny romance about two people who fall in love through their anonymous pen pal letters to each other while unable to stand each other in person. What makes it more than wonderful is that it is also a story about the shop in which they work. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the scenes that had nothing to do with the question of "when will they get together?" While rooting for Klara Novak and Alfred Kralik (Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart) to realize what is happening to them, we also get to follow Kralik's friendships and the ups and downs of Mr. Matuschek's (Frank Morgan's) store.

This is a movie of great dialogue:

Alfred Kralik: [asking co-worker Pirovitch about cost of living for a married couple] Suppose a fellow gets an apartment with three rooms. Dining room, bedroom, living room.
Pirovitch: What do you need three rooms for? You live in the bedroom.
Alfred Kralik: Where do you eat?
Pirovitch: In the kitchen. You get a nice big kitchen.
Alfred Kralik: Where do you entertain?
Pirovitch: Entertain? What are you, an embassador? Who do you want to entertain? Listen listen, if someone is really your friend, he comes after dinner.
And then of course there is the dialogue between Klara and Alfred, who are just so stubborn and determined to be mean to each other.
Alfred Kralik: Are you disappointed?
Klara Novak : Psychologically, I'm very confused... But personally, I don't feel bad at all.

Four really big stars. To be watched again.

Vivacious Lady (1938)

2011-08-13T17:15:00.000-07:00

Some reasons I love this movie:

1. When Professor Peter Morgan (Jimmy Stewart) falls in love at first sight with night club singer/dancer Francey (Ginger Rogers), I believe it.
2. So many crazy scenarios are made possible by Peter's decision to wait before telling his very conservative university president father that he has married the unknown Francey during a trip to New York. Unfortunately, Peter doesn't manage to tell his family about Francey for a long long time.

3. Although Peter's cousin Keith shows early signs of wanting Francey for himself, when Peter and Francey are forced to spend their first night apart, Keith brings them each one of the toppers from their wedding cake to keep them company.

4. Ginger Rogers is tough. As Francey, she takes the woman who wants to be Peter's fiance and flips her right over her shoulder. She was provoked. A very funny scene.
5. The dance scene...
Three stars because the acting was great and the plot was really very funny. It think it lost that fourth star just for being a little too long. There were just a few too many crazy hijinks keeping the couple apart. Apparently TCM agrees. They called it "everlong." But I would definitely see this again.

It's a Wonderful World (1939)

2011-08-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

Turner Classic Movies is really a wonderful thing... So many movies not available on Netflix or from the library... Like this one with Jimmy Stewart. Stewart is detective Guy Johnson, arrested for hiding a client who has been framed for murder. While in a train en route to prison, Johnson notices a newspaper ad that may just be the clue he needs to lead him to the real killer. Johnson's dramatic escape from the train is witnessed by poetess Edwina Corday, played by Claudette Colbert. The rest of the movie is one crazy hijink after another.

There is the kidnapping of the poetess,

The handcuffing of the poetess to himself,

The poetess's realization that Johnson is not a dangerous escaped convict, but a noble detective trying to save his client from death row... a realization that leads to many misguided attempts to help him,

And a stolen disguise.
Apparently Claudette Colbert was unhappy with the bickering road trip similarities between this movie and It Happened One Night, but I didn't mind. Three stars just for reminding me that Jimmy Stewart can be good in laugh-out-loud comedy. I would be happy to see this again. "I swear by my eyes."

My Man Godfrey (1936)

2011-08-04T17:55:00.000-07:00

Eccentric rich people can be very funny. Especially if one of them is played by Carole Lombard, who is wonderful at appearing effortlessly nutty in a variety of situations. In this situation, Lombard plays Irene Bullock, one of two Bullock sisters in a family in which each member is insanely eccentric in their own special way. Irene is an expert at throwing fits, sobbing, fainting, and overdramatizing. She is very good at getting her way, even if it takes drawing out her fits over months. Irene's sister Cornelia is more sinisterly eccentric. She is good at making biting comments and scheming up ways to destroy the lives of others. Mrs. Bullock is just dotty. She sees pixies when she's hung over, and she keeps a protege named Carlo, who spends his days eating the family's food and pretending to practice his music. He also can do an intensely accurate gorilla impression to try to cheer up Irene when she's having a fit. Mr. Bullock, the apparent long-suffereing man in a family of loopy women, is only slightly less eccentric than the rest of his family. His eccentricity seems to be that he is incapable of keeping the rest of his family in check. Enter into this crazy family the dignified butler Godfrey (William Powell), and you have My Man Godfrey.

Of course even Godfrey has his eccentricities, though. Before becoming the butler for the Bullocks, he was a living in a New York City dump. How did he end up working for the Bullocks? He was picked up in a scavenger hunt. Mrs. Bullock earned points by finding a goat... Irene Bullock managed to get the catch of the evening, a "forgotten man." After Godfrey helps Irene win the scavenger hunt, she impulsively hires him as the family's new butler, and he enters their crazy home...

...Irene falls almost immediately in love: "Oh, you're more than a butler. You're the first protege I've ever had."

...Mr. Bullock loses all semblance of control over the family finances: "Why should the government get more money than your own flesh and blood?"

...Cornelia seethes over the fact that Godfrey did not help her in the scavenger hunt and plots revenge: "Godfrey knows I'm not being personal, but after all, none of us would like to wake up some morning stabbed to death."

...and Mrs. Bullock demonstrates her crazy thinking about the world: "[Godfrey's] the first thing [Irene's] shown any affection for since her Pomeranian died last summer."

Godfrey calmly goes with the flow, intervening only when Irene is a little too amorous:

G: "Hasn't anyone every told you about certain proprieties?"

I: "Oh you use such lovely big words. I like big words. What does it mean?"

G: "Well, I'll try to simplify it. Hasn't your mother ever explained to you that some things are proper and some things are not?"

I: "No she hasn't. She rambles on quite a bit, but then she never says anything.

I would watch this again. Three stars. One for Carole Lombard, who is always entertaining, one for making me laugh even when there were holes in the plot, and one for William Powell's Godfrey, who is keeping an eccentric secret of his own.

Rebecca (1940)

2011-07-29T16:49:00.000-07:00

I love this movie. Joan Fontaine plays the second Mrs. de Winter, never given a first name in either the book by Daphne Du Maurier or the movie. While working as a companion to an elderly rich woman, the second Mrs. de Winter meets Mr. de Winter at a resort in Monte Carlo. He is moody and mysterious from the moment she meets him, an encounter during which he appears to be about to jump off of a cliff. She is completely unsure of what to make of him or if he even likes her. She is taken by surprise when he proposes marriage to her rather than lose her, when her companion packs up to sail off to New York.

When the second Mrs. de Winter arrives at the luxurious Manderley with her new husband, we find out why it is that she has no name of her own. She is living in the shadow of the first Mrs. de Winter... Rebecca. She is also at the whim of the creepy Mrs. Danvers, who came to Manderley with Rebecca and has remained devoted to her even after her assumed death in a boating accident. Mrs. Danvers is not so happy to see a new Mrs. de Winter taking Rebecca's place. And Mr. de Winter is too moody and busy to notice what is happening to his new wife. Or does he regret having married her at all?

Really the only thing that annoys me in Rebecca is the way Mr. de Winter treats his new wife from the moment he meets her. I know he is supposed to be a damaged, grief-stricken man, but being damaged and grief-stricken are more handy for explaining away intense moodiness than for explaining away why he thinks his new bride is a little child.

(1)"I'm not hungry."

"Eat up like a good little girl."

(2)He hides her tennis racket behind a plant after declaring they should go for a drive.

(3)"Stop biting your nails."

(4)"I'm asking you to marry me you little fool!"

But the future Mrs. deWinter does not seem to mind any of this. It seems to be what she expects. It is only the intense moodiness that seems to get her down. I suppose I should just be happy to be a young woman in the 21st century. Three stars, and I want Joan Fontaine's wardrobe from the movie. I would definitely see this again someday. It also makes me want to reread the book.

I'm No Angel (1933)

2011-07-25T15:40:00.000-07:00

Well that was confusing... It is definitely a one star movie, but I just clapped at the ending. And not because it was over, but because I was laughing hysterically.

This movie raised a lot of questions for me:

Why was it not a bigger deal that when Tira (Mae West) was caught entertaining a rich man, her jealous co-worker showed up, hit the guy over the head, and the two of them left the man for dead in the hallway? It seems this was just a minor little mishap that created a need for Tira to make some more money.

"I think he's croaked."

"Where am I gonna put a stiff in this joint?"

"Put him out in the hall."

What did Tira's fortune teller think of her plan to make more money in the circus (she's in the circus!) by sticking her head in the lion's mouth during her lion act? She carries around an astrology booklet and seems to read it every morning, yet the new act seemed pretty impulsive.

"I'll even stick my head in the big cat's mouth!"

"Say, if them lions don't show some sense, I'm goin' down there and bite her myself."

Was Mae West really sticking her head in a lion's mouth? It sure looked like it. Where did the movie studio get all of those lions? And why can't I find a picture of them?

Why does Mae West include "Mmm-mm" at the end of almost everything she says? Character or actress? I suppose it goes well with phrases such as:

"When I was born with this face, it was the same as striking oil."

"Crazy for me, the guy's a pushover for me."

"I'll tell you this much. You're gonna like what I have in mind."

It also does go quite well with spritzing perfume all over one's self while singing, "No One Loves Me Like That Dallas Man..."

When on earth did Jack Clayton (Cary Grant) fall in love with Tira, and how did I miss it?

Jack arrived 49 minutes into the movie, and then 1 minute later they were talking marriage. The entirely unbelievable romance makes it impossible for me to give this movie more than one star, no matter how many ridiculous scenes made me laugh. The unbelievable romance and the cringe-inducing scenes with her black maids, that is.

Very important question: If David had been watching the final court scenes of the movie, in which Mae West saunters around the court room "Mmm-mm-ing" and cross-examining witnesses, would it have been more useful than the studying he was doing on his own for the bar?

And why did I not wear a crown at my wedding?

I will only see this movie again if Amy watches it with me. I'm not sure I would laugh as much seeing it a second time alone. Story and screenplay by Mae West.

Life With Father (1947)

2011-07-21T17:53:00.000-07:00

About 20 mintues into the movie, Clarence (William Powell) storms into an agency that hires out maids demanding, "Where do you keep 'em?" You see, just a few minutes earlier Clarence had scared away the most recent maid in a long line of scared maids. The woman manning the agency desk tries to prevent Clarence from rushing into the room with the maids. When she fails, and he picks which maid he wants, the woman explains that she needs to know the character of the house to which the maid will be going before she can allow her to go anywhere with him. The reply: "Madam, I am the character of my home!" And here we have the main source of comedy and conflict in the movie. Clarence is a character.

It is currently somewhere between 90 and 100 degrees outside and probably close to that in my apartment. I cannot think. I can barely move. I needed a funny movie to distract me. Unfortunately, this movie did not distract me. There is perhaps a reason I had not heard of it before I found it in Netflix's instant watch list. Many jokes were made, but they were often just too corny to laugh at. Two masters of witty dialogue and comic timing wasted.

Once Elizabeth Taylor, as a wide-eyed, bonnet-wearing young maiden, started asking Clarence Jr. if he believes in girls going to college, I decided never mind the temperature, I needed to at least be knitting so I could handle the rest of the movie. Then, during the whole to-do about how Elizabeth Taylor's character is a Methodist and the members of Clarence's family are Episcopalian and the ensuing drama about the discovery that Clarence was never actually baptized as a child, I started to pay more attention to my knitting than to the movie. But then I started to think, if only this movie ends with William Powell in a long frilly white gown getting baptized, maybe I will laugh.

To be fair, though, I did chuckle a few times throughout the movie:

*"You know your father doesn't like electricity!" (There were a lot of things Father (Clarence) didn't like, from kneeling in church to rubber plants.)

*"Do you ever play duets?"

"No, not till now."

"Neither have I, not till now." (Was this exchange between Elizabeth Taylor and Clarence Jr. meant to be funny? I'm really not sure.)

*Clarence discussing his pew and its falling property values with the minister and his wondering when it might be best to unload it.

*Clarence Jr. believing he is possessed by his father's old suit and not being able to do anything his father wouldn't do while he wears it. Elizabeth Taylor cannot sit on his lap, because it would be like she is sitting on Father's pants.

I cannot forget William Powell in this movie after puzzling over his bright red Technicolor hair for almost two hours, but from this moment on, I will do my best to forget Irene Dunn's part as his wife. In other words, one star, and I don't plan to see this again. I need a funny and GOOD movie!

Three Loves Has Nancy (1938)

2011-07-17T08:40:00.000-07:00

Robert Montgomery is a distinct improvement over Robert Young. I'm sorry, but I just don't get that funny feeling in the pit of my tummy for poor little Robert Young that Robert Montgomery can give me.

Janet Gaynor's a cutie, too and it's her routine that carries this movie.
So the premise here is that Nancy's fiance goes missing on her wedding day, so, naturally, she goes to New York to fetch him. Nancy is a small-town girl from the south and has never traveled. On the train she meets Mr. Niles (Montgomery), who is returning to New York because he's heard that Vivian, the pest of a girl who is trying to corner him and wring a proposal out of him, has finally left for Europe.
Nancy is a complete bumpkin and gets herself into trouble at every turn. Mr. Niles first helps her, then helping her turns into a disaster and he never wants to see her again.
When she can't find George, however, she turns up on Niles' doorstep with perfect timing - he uses her to convince Vivian he is engaged to someone else.
Now ensconced in his life, Nancy turns his world and the world of his publisher, next door neighbor, and best friend, Mr. Hanson, upside-down - just by being herself.
It's a tour-de-force performance by Gaynor who is perfectly convincing with the help of her neat but completely unfashionable outfits. Bustling around innocently, she's actually quite clever. At one point Mr. Niles is interrupted by the telephone for the third time in a row and says "who invented those things, anyway?" and she replies with crisp precision: "Alexander Graham Bell," and adds, "in 1865." She'll teach you a thing or two, MISTER Niles.
Margo and I were actually laughing out loud at some of the slapstick scenes and there were a lot of great one-liners.
Still searching for the missing fiance, Nancy finds his ukele at a shop where he used to work. She bursts into tears, "George's ukele!" The store clerk just looks at her with stony indifference and quips "You'd cry more over it if you had to hear him play!"
After a long evening of monologues from Joan Crawford and earnest expressions of virtue from gamblers, it was really nice just to laugh.
Margo and I both proclaimed this a buried gem that we put in a category with Bringing Up Baby and we would definitely watch it again. Four stars.

The Bride Wore Red (1937)

2011-07-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

Margo must have tivo'ed a whole Robert Young marathon at some point. Because here he is again.

This time with Joan Crawford. Margo and I were joking that this was when she got started stealing other women's husbands, warming up for The Women (two years later 1939). She plays a kind of Eliza Dolittle character: she is working as a cabaret girl when a rich Count pays her way to a fancy resort in Turano where she will trick his young friend into believing she is a Lady, thus proving the young man, who insists there is a difference between society ladies and cabaret girls, wrong.
The TWIST is that she is much better as a peasant than a lady, and she enjoys it more.

Look how much she is enjoying being a peasant!
There is an assumption the movie makes that a peasant and a cabaret girl are from equivalent social classes, but that's about as ridiculous as her authentic peasant costume. So the whole premise that you have a "place" and you just have to find it is kind of a way of saying stay in your own class, but not because we're making you, just because you'll be happier there!
Anyhow, all that aside, the movie has a lot to recommend it -
1. There are the costumes, which are awesome and a big part of the story.
2. Rags to riches, gotta love it.
3. Scam - gotta love her pulling off the act.
4. There's something very Maria Von Trapp about her love of the outdoors.
5. The old friend who just happens to turn up as a maid at the hotel, Maria, is just great.
The other thing is the love story - the peasant Postman that she falls for is actually so lovable I really got attached to him and was rooting for him whole-heartedly at the end when she had to choose - the life of a rich fraud or a simple, wholesome life in the country with her Postman lover. If you would have told me an hour and eighteen minutes ago that I would really enjoy a Postman as a romantic hero, I might have doubted you, but no longer. Giulio has won my heart.

Towards the beginning and the end, the script gets a little speechy with lots of dramatic monologues...therefore I conclude it must have been adapted from a successful stage play - and I just checked and yes, it was adapted from a play. You can just tell when someone has been trying to make Art. It's a shame because it messes with what is otherwise great entertainment (this is my problem with Holiday, too).

Still, for the costumes, the romance, the fun of the maid's lines - and for making a key dramatic line out of the truly prosaic "A well-organized telegraph office always keeps copies!" - I have to give this four stars.
I would totally watch it again.

Gambling Lady (1934)

2011-07-16T22:04:00.000-07:00

You've just gotta love Barbara Stanwyck!

So she's supposed to be a tough girl, but honest. Her father is a gambler who always plays it straight, even when his luck fails him.

Working for a gambling ring called "The Syndicate", he falls on hard times, and a bookie friend named Charlie looks out for them. (SIDE NOTE: The Syndicate is somewhat sinister and in an early seen is shown to be multi-racial. I think this was meant to be ominous at the time, but to a modern audience it looks like a meeting of the UN).

Later, she goes into business for herself as a gambler and does pretty well - but always honestly. When a nice young man from a rich family falls for her at first she thinks it will never work, but she won't take a bribe to jilt him.
Her sense of honesty, loyalty and honor ends up serving her well when someone close to her is framed for a crime and only her reputation can save her from ruin.

She's kind of like a Golden Age version of Goody Proctor, if you really think about it, only with a happy ending. Stanwyck is excellent.

Three stars, would definitely watch again (Margo wasn't as much of a fan).

Bridal Suite (1939)

2011-07-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

Margo likes movies from the 30s, so get ready for some extra-old classics!

We watched this a few months ago so my memory is a little rusty but it also wasn't all that great...Robert Young plays an irresponsible playboy who forgets his own wedding day...TWICE. I mean, it's kind of hard to get behind the marriage at that point no matter how invested you may be in a happy ending.
His father is quite properly disgusted with him and cuts him off. His mother, indulgent to a fault, decides he needs a doctor's note from her favorite psychiatrist and drags him to Switzerland where the hapless doctor is vacationing in his chalet.
I'll tell you that this photo is of the happy young playboy and his innocent mountain maiden. And I'll tell you that there is a happy ending. But I will be damned if I'm going to explain the intricacies of the strudel-making, glockspiel-playing, antics in pajamas and avalanche-inducing yodeling that we will have to endure in order to arrive at that happy ending.
Margo looked up the starring actress, Annabella, and learned that she was all the rage in France and was imported with great fanfare to America, to no great success. You can see why. Though she comes across as sincere and sweet and Robert Young is affable as always, there is nothing to really excite you about their chemistry.
Ultimately, it's a silly movie.
Will not watch again. Two stars.

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

2011-04-23T15:48:00.000-07:00

We're watching a legal movie so David can "study" for finals... Anatomy of a Murder.

Paul Biegler (James Stewart) is defending Lt. Frederick Manion, after Manion shoots and kills the man who raped his wife. Believe it or not, there are many funny moments in this film.

Lessons I learned:

*Lawyers have pretty books.

*Lawyers drink.

*There is no unwritten law. (Remember the pretty books.)

*Lap dogs like beer. It makes them sleepy.

*Always insist that your client and all related parties wear girdles. Attractive jiggling is not for the public.

*Everything goes in the docket.

*A jury can't really disregard what it's already heard.

*It's the role of the attorneys to provide the wisecracks in a trial.

*The prosecution will always object to "flagrant sneaking subterfuge" on the part of the defense.

*"People aren't just good or bad, they're many things."

*Cute furry animals can help your case, especially if they are smart enough to turn on and carry a flashlight.

*Research is important... You have to know your precedent.

*Buttering up the judge never hurts.

But David would point out that not everything in this movie was entirely proper. I think he's ready for finals. Three stars, and I would probably see this again. Maybe in preparation for the Bar.

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

2011-04-21T06:49:00.000-07:00

A World War II comedy set in Poland complete with a play about Nazis, real invading Nazis, and actors in their Nazi costumes trying to get the real Nazis to think that they are Nazis, too. Funny movie. The acting troupe at the center of this movie is about to have their first performance of a play about Nazi Germany, despite some disputes amongst the actors. For example, "Heil myself," while deemed great for a laugh by the actor playing Hitler, is believed by the director to be un-Hilter-like. Unfortunately, the play is shut down, because the Polish war board is afraid the play will offend Hitler. When the Nazis invade, though, the costumes and sets of the canceled play come in handy in unexpected ways.

When the Nazis invade Poland, the acting troupe is in the middle of its own drama. It is performing Hamlet with husband and wife stars Maria and Joseph Tura (Carole Lombard and Jack Benny) in the lead roles. Maria has been recently introduced to a young aviator who has been to see all her shows. He's been sneaking back to her dressing room to talk with her every night when her husband goes into his "To be or not to be..." soliloquy. Joseph has noticed the audience getting up to let someone out, but has not yet put the pieces together. He just thinks he has experienced "What every actor dreads... Someone walked out on me." Joseph is spared from finding out about his wife's admirer by the announcement of war. The young aviator goes of to war...

The real hilarity begins when the young aviator discovers that a German spy is on his way to Poland to give the names of important resistance leaders to the Gestapo. The aviator returns to Poland (by plane and parachute) and enlists the help of Maria in foiling the spy. With Joseph's permission of course:

Josef Tura: Wait a minute. I'll decide with whom my wife is going to have dinner and whom she's going to kill.
Maria Tura: Don't you realize Poland's at stake?
Lieutenant Sobinski: Have you no patriotism?
Josef Tura: Now listen, you... first you walk out on my soliloquy and then you walk into my slippers. And now you question my patriotism. I'm a good Pole and I love my country and I love my slippers.

Enter many mistaken identities and rescue attempts. One of the best scenes involves a dead man and a false beard. I would definitely see this movie again, but it's probably only a two star movie... But who cares. One star for Carole Lombard, who was a funny funny lady, one star for the false beard scene, and one more for being so quotable. Three stars! "You can't have your cake and shoot it too."

The Lady Eve (1941)

2011-04-04T16:06:00.000-07:00

I think Barbara Stanwyck is fantastic. She really makes this movie. Stanwyck plays Jean, a con artist who works with her father to woo men into losing lots of money to them at cards. On a cruise back to New York from South America, Jean and her father set their sights on the handsome yet bumbling herpetologist Charles (Henry Ford). I knew I was going to enjoy the movie, no matter how silly the plot, from the moment Jean started her narration of what all the other women she watched trying to pick up Charles must be saying. Jean, though, does not need a pick-up line. She very suavely trips Charles as he walks past her table, convinces him to walk her back to her cabin so she can change into new and undamaged shoes, and seduces him by suggesting he put the new shoes on her. From the moment Charles starts handling her feet, his eyes go all swimmy, and he is ready to follow her anywhere.

He follows her back to the dinner table, where Jean's father starts to set him up to lose a lot of money. And the courtship begins, with Charles bumbling over his words, and Jean delivering great lines like:

"I know what you meant, I was just flirting with you." and

"You're not going to faint, are you?"

The plot takes a quick turn when Jean announces that she is actually in love with Charles. She convinces her father not to take any of Charles's money, and she accepts Charles's marriage proposal. Unfortunately for Jean, though, the very morning after Charles proposes, someone tips Charles off to the scam. Charles won't believe that Jean is reformed or that she really does love him, and they part ways.

The rest of the movie involves a very complexly nutty scheme to get back at Charles. For as Jean says, "I need him like the axe needs the turkey." Jean goes to some pretty crazy lengths to get her revenge. I spent a lot of time wondering why she was bothering... and then everything made sense at the end of the movie. It will be a lot more fun if you don't try to predict what is going to happen!

Only two stars due to many tedious moments and the stupidity of the male lead (Barbara Stanwyck's great line delivery just isn't enough to make me believe that her character Jean actually cares anything for Charles), but I would see this again. It also really makes me want to investigate more Barbara Stanwyck movies.

Indiscreet (1958)

2011-03-29T13:31:00.000-07:00

Cary Grant... Ingrid Bergman... "romantic comedy." Sounds like what I need right now. All in all, it was silly and not the best work by either of them, but it turned out to be an entertaining movie to watch while packing and doing school work. Really, the last part of the movie is where most of the comedy enters the picture. I chuckled at the ending line.

Anna Kalman (Bergman) has given up on finding the right man. Her most recent find, "the one who looked like a Greek statue," has turned out to be rather silly. Or in Anna's words, "He talked like a Greek statue. I don't think he knew more than a dozen words." Anna's sister doesn't seem to have a very good opinion of men herself, telling Anna, "I don't know what you expect from a man. You know there's a limit to how entertaining they can be." But Anna believes "they ought to be able to talk a little, simple sentences."

And then Philip (Grant) enters the room, and it's love at first sight for Anna. Philip is dashing, speaks clearly and intelligently about monetary policy while wearing enormous glasses, and is an excellent dinner date. Unfortunately, after their first dinner together, Philip admits, "I'm a married man, Miss Kalman." And thus begins the tortured staring at each other set to music, the long phone calls, and the secret dinners and late night drinks.

But, spoiler:

Philip, it turns out, has developed an insane way of dating without raising any expectations. "I don't care to be married," he says. "On the other hand, I have no intention of giving up women." Anna has found herself a catch. Hilarity and revenge ensue.

Two stars. If it weren't for the fact I own this movie as part of a box set, I probably wouldn't be tempted to see it again. For great Grant and Bergman, watch Notorious.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

2011-03-23T17:30:00.000-07:00

"Oh Dexter, I'll be yar now... I promise I'll be yar." And with statement, the independent, smart, and funny Tracy Lord (played by Katherine Hepburn) gives in to her ex-husband (Cary Grant) and admits that women should be sweet and manageable and that she has been wrong to be so strong in the past. Warning: Although I do love some things about this movie, I'm not feeling very generous toward it at the moment. I forgot between viewings just how many painfully obnoxious moments there are.

The movie begins with Tracy preparing for her marriage to a second husband. The first marriage, we learn, ended because of Dex's (Grant's) drinking problem. A paper wants to do a story on the wedding (Tracy is high society), but Tracy is too private to allow photos. The paper's head honcho happens to have a story on Tracy's dad, who happens to be having an affair. He blackmails Dex into bringing a reporter and a photographer into Tracy's family home, promising to sit on the story on Mr. Lord as long as there's a story on the wedding. James Stewart plays the wonderfully sarcastic reporter who falls for Tracy. Much hilarity ensues, involving swimming, champagne, crooning, and huge hangovers.
My problem with the plot, is that we are later shown that Dex's drinking wasn't really the worst of things in Dex and Tracy's marriage. The worst of things was that Tracy was a "distant goddess," unable to accept frailty in others or to offer womanly warmth and support. First Dex tells Tracy this. Then James Stewart makes some statements confirming it...only he doesn't mind. He's new enough to like putting her up on a pedestal as a "queen." Then... final straw... Tracy's somewhat-estranged father returns from his affair with a young dancer in NYC and essentially blames Tracy for the fact that he had an affair.

And here it is, the most annoying part of the movie:

Mr. Lord: What most wives fail to realize is that their husband's philandering has nothing whatsoever to do with them.

Tracy: Oh? Then what has it to do with?

Mr. Lord: A reluctance to grow old, I think. I suppose the best mainstay a man can have as he gets along in years is a daughter - the right kind of daughter.

And then he goes on to explain. You see, Mr. Lord just needed a way to hold on to some of his youth, but instead of being blessed with a sweet young daughter to help him, he ended up with a harsh, shall we say "shrew," of a daughter who had a "prejudice against weakness." Seems she didn't like putting up with a constantly drunk husband or a dad who was off very publicly cheating on her mom.

Another way of looking at this movie is that it is in the "divorced, but will they find their way back together?" category of films. Cary Grant seems to be in a bunch of these. I believe the lesson in this film is that if you let yourself be tamed, yes, you can have a second chance. Despite my rants, I'm still giving this three stars, because the acting was fantastic, and I'm willing to put some blame on the time period in which it was made. And Dex does at least tell Tracy, "Be whatever you like, you're my redhead," and he has given up his drinking when he returns. Anyways, I know I'll see this and rant and laugh many more times.

P.S. - Something enjoyable that does not come with a rant:

With 12 movies on this blog already tagged with "odd precocious little girl," I can't believe one of them was not this movie. Virginia Weidler, as usual, plays the perfect "odd precocious little girl," from her early comment about the papers being "full of innundo" to her dramatic interpretation of a spoiled little rich girl, when she and Tracy try to mess with the reporters sent to do the story on Tracy's wedding.

And of course there's her comment about the fancy dress she wears to the wedding...

Mrs. Lord: I think that dress hikes up a little behind.

Dinah: No... I do.

I am a huge fan of Virginia Weidler.

Fiesta (1947)

2011-03-14T16:30:00.000-07:00

Another Esther Williams film that doesn't even feature swimming? What does she do?
Bullfighting of course! My friend Yvonne and I sat down to watch this movie even after all of my warnings that a non-swimming movie in the Esther Williams box set volume 2 was bound to be scary. And we did have fun...

The story begins in a town in Mexico, when former star bullfighter Antonio Moralas meets his new baby daughter. He does very little to hide his disappointment that she is a girl. Even his assurance of, "Don't think I'm disappointed because she is a girl," is negated by his elation when a twin baby boy appears minutes later. "Gracias!" he tells his wife, and the whole staff is invited to drink to the baby boy. Even when the little girl grows up to be Esther Williams (playing Maria Morales), Mr Moralas only has eyes for his son, who he expects to become a great bullfighter like himself. Sadly for Mr. Moralas, though, his son Mario (Ricardo Montalban) is busy writing concertos that are "as beautiful as a hundred butterflies." Maria is the one who's interested in bulls.
The plot thickens when Maria sends Mario's concerto to a famous composer, the composer shows up to meet Mario the genius, and Mr. Moralas hides the visit from Mario so as not to distract him from bullfighting. When Mario learns of his father's deceit he runs off. Of course the only way Maria can think of to bring him back is to dress herself as her twin brother and enter bullfights in his name. Of course.

Questions raised:

Does a bullfight really end when you tap a bull on the head? And does that really make the bull just lie down and act pleasant? Or does that just work for Esther Williams? I assume the real thing ends with something more gruesome... Perhaps that's why the camera swings away right before she taps the bull on the head...

Wikipedia article on bullfighting

Two stars, because I'm feeling generous, and someone was doing a nice job working with the animals in the bull ring, but once was enough.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

2011-03-09T16:33:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while it's nice just to watch a movie I already know I like. Enter To Catch a Thief, a Hitchcock film with great acting, great dialogue, and fascinating wardrobe choices. And of course Cary Grant is Cary Grant, looking suave even in a crazy red with white polka dots silk scarf wrapped around his neck.

But of course he is suave, not only is he Cary Grant, he is playing John Robie, a former jewel thief turned hero of the French resistance. Robie comes under suspicion after a string of jewel thefts, all bearing his famous mark. With the police on his tail, he escapes by boat to Cannes, where he makes his first costume change. And yes, he continues to look suave floating to shore in his new plaid bathing trunks.

A worried jewelry insurance agent convinces Robie to try to clear his own name by catching the copycat burglar. Robie is equipped with a list of the insured and any personal details that could help him to keep a good watch on then, prompting the well delivered, "I wish I'd known someone in the insurance racket when I went into the burglary business." Robie quickly settles into the Ritz Carlton Hotel under a fake name in order to befriend and keep an eye on the heavily jeweled Jessie Stevens. And there he meets her daughter Frances, played by Grace Kelly. Grace Kelly's dresses are honestly reason enough to watch this movie. Leaving aside whether or not I could pull any of them off, I want them. Especially this one:

In fact, the only outfit of hers in which I have no interest is the "bathing costume" below:

Robie is not put off by the bathing costume, though. What puts him off about Frances Stevens is when she reveals that not only does she know he's really Robie "the cat," but she believes he is in fact guilty of the current crime spree and... wants to join him. Robie just isn't interested in "women who need weird excitement."

Cary Grant climbing around on rooftops, Grace Kelly's dresses, a Hitchcock mystery to solve...I love this movie.

One more great line I couldn't work in above...

Jesse about her daughter Frances: "Sorry I ever sent her to that finishing school. I think they finished her there." Four stars, and I will definitely watch this again.

Song of the Thin Man (1947)

2011-02-19T07:17:00.001-08:00

But first, a Thin Man marathon...

9:50 - The Thin Man

"a manhattan, you shake to a foxtrot..."

"Waiter, will you serve the nuts... I mean, will you serve the guests the nuts."

11:45- After the Thin Man

"Nick-oh-laas!"

*a long walk to a coffee shop and back...*

3:00 - Another Thin Man

"I wish my old lady were bats that way."

Asta acrobatics!

5:04 - Shadow of the Thin Man

"Daddy, drink milk!"

"But Daddy doesn't like milk."

7:09 - The Thin Man Goes Home

"Why did he herd us into the room like this?"

"...this is the way he always works."

and the finale... 9:04 - Song of the Thin Man

I waited so long to finish this series of films. I think I was worried I would be sad when there were no more "new" Thin Man movies left to see. (And maybe a little worried that I would be disappointed in the later films.) Not sad, though, because I am perfectly happy re-watching. Not disappointed, either. The Asta actors do more cutesy tricks in each film, now there is a child to provide occasional silly kid quotes, and maybe there's less drinking, but Nick and Nora are still Nick and Nora. And Nora even gets to participate more in this mystery. Nick doesn't shove her in any falsely directed cabs or lock her in any rooms to prevent her from helping. Good for him. So, while the first film is definitely my favorite, I will still give this movie three stars, and I'm sure I will see it again sometime. Not sure there will ever be another marathon, though.

The Big Sleep (1946)

2010-12-29T10:14:00.001-08:00

Connie: "You're not very tall, are you?"
Marlowe: "Well, I try to be."

And so it begins... I love this movie. I could watch it over and over just for its great lines. As for the plot: When Detective Marlowe (Bogart) is called in to help a very wealthy man try to solve some of his messed up daughter's (the above Connie's) gambling problems, Marlowe becomes involved with deeper intrigue. And with Connie's sister Vivian (Lauren Bacall). Enter more great dialogue.
This movie has everything a great detective film should have, from a long and winding cast of characters who are never quite what they claim to be to a mysterious and sarcastic leading lady. I'm not sure I can say anything else about it without giving away plot twists!
"You begin to interest me, vaguely."
Four stars.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

2010-12-10T18:05:00.000-08:00

Inspired by a real-live almost filibuster (Bernie Sanders, December 10, 2010), David and I sat down to watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Jessica: So, what do you like about filibusters?
David: Well, I don't like faux filibusters, where it is used a procedural measure to block a vote without anyone actually having to get up and talk. Now a real filibuster, where one person or a group of people engage in a marathon of talking to draw attention to an issue they see as important, that has some appeal. As the announcer in Mr Smith says, free speech at its finest. That's kind of cool.

Jessica: What do you like about Mr. Smith Goes to Washington?
David: It's the classic David and Goliath story. An everyman against a political machine. And we all know Jimmy Stewart is great at playing the everyman. Also, it appeals to the vision of America as a country of ideas where the pen really is mightier than the sword or the pocket book.

Jessica: Tell us a little about Mr. Smith's cause.
David: Jefferson Smith is the head of the boy rangers, an organization clearly based upon the boy scouts. He would like to build a national boys' camp in his home state to be payed for in nickels and pennies sent in by boys all over the country. Unfortunately for Mr. Smith, the site where he would like to build the boys' camp is also the site of a proposed dam. The construction of this dam has been snuck into a bill by Jeff's fellow senator as graft. This of course means that Jeff starts asking inconvenient questions.

Jessica: What is your favorite part of Mr. Smith's filibuster?
David: When the page brings him a note from Saunders (Jean Arthur). I'm a sap. Just wait for it.

Jessica: May we watch many more political movies together.
David: I suggest The American President, although it's not a classic by the terms of this blog.

Four stars... would watch again.

Monkey Business (1952)

2010-11-24T16:42:00.000-08:00

Despite what the box might make you think, this movie is not about Marilyn Monroe's character at all. This is a movie about Barnaby (Cary Grant), who thinks he has created some magical formula that makes you act and feel much younger than you are, and his wife Edwina (Ginger Rogers). Marilyn Monroe plays a secretary at the chemical lab where Barnaby works, and she goes along with him on his day of feeling 20. They roller skate, go to the pool, crash a car... But Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers are the fun parts of this not-so-wonderful movie.

If I could ignore the fact that the plot is touched off by a chimpanzee getting loose, accidentally creating a brilliant chemical formula, and then dumping the formula in the water cooler so it can begin to confuse and alter everyone, I could concentrate on the fact that I would like to see more of Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers. "Tell me, is anyone giving a party tonight we can stay home from?" Grant and Rogers have some good lines together. And she dances, and he even does a cartwheel. And he sings. Just leave out the chimps, and put them in a different movie together. Two stars, because this movie was so much better than Thank Your Lucky Stars, which I also just wrote about, but I am ready to search out other Grant/Rogers films.

Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)

2010-11-20T13:27:00.000-08:00

Browsing in the library and picking up an un-heard of movie... is it a good idea? Not really.

This movie has a lot of big names... most of them play themselves. Despite the fact that the synopsis on the box claimed there was a plot, it took a good 20 minutes before I believed there was one, because I just kept hearing the stars' names in the movie. And nothing was happening. Eddie Cantor (himself) hosts a radio variety show. Edward Everett Horton (not himself) and friend hear Dinah Shore (herself) sing on the show and decide that they must have her for their upcoming star-studded production. Sadly for them, Dinah comes along with allowing Cantor to be on the board, and Cantor has really annoying ideas.

Most of the plot comes from a wanna-be singer who ends up with a contract to sing on Cantor's show, without Cantor's permission. Excited wanna-be singer meets an annoying wanna-be songwriter woman, and the two of them, along with a "homes of the stars" tour guide, stalk Cantor as he throws them out of his sets multiple times. The tour guide, by the way, is played by Eddie Cantor. Much of this might have been at least a little funnier had the name Eddie Cantor meant anything to me before this movie. There is some hilarity (insane asylum, elephant...), but mostly there is just a really boring movie with some awful dialogue and musical acts.

Low points: Bette Davis's (as herself) number in the musical production and Olivia deHavilland's (as herself) number

High point: Errol Flynn's (as himself) musical number... "Oh that voice is so divine... I'm sorry it isn't mine"

Was this movie fun for the people in it? Was it entertaining when it came out? One star, and I really don't want to see this again.

Top Hat (1935)

2010-11-14T07:32:00.000-08:00

Ahhhh. This is a four star movie and near perfect Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Zany and fun plot, great lines, lovely (and insane) dresses, and fancy footwork. The only reason I call it "near perfect" and not "perfect" is that Astaire and Rogers kept their feet mostly on the ground in this movie. No unusual dancing up and over furniture or on walls to make it extra exciting. But I can't always expect dancing on walls.

The movie opens beautifully with Jerry Travers (Astaire) trying to silently fold his paper in a "silent" club while waiting for Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton), the producer of a show in which he's about to star. Horace sets Jerry up staying with him in his hotel and then tells Jerry that he wants Jerry to fly to Italy with him after the show to meet up with his wife Madge (Helen Broderick) and some girl Madge wants to fix Jerry up with. Jerry doesn't really want to go.

Jerry: "Is she expecting me for a weekend or a wedding?"

Horace: "You know how wives are..."

Jerry: "No I don't. How are they?"

Horace: "...always have a scheme... It's time you found out for yourself."

Jerry especially doesn't want to go anywhere after he meets the beautiful Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers), another hotel guest. Jerry meets Dale when he tap dances in the room above her while she's trying to sleep, and she has to come upstairs and give him a piece of her mind. Jerry tells Dale that she can help cure him of the dancing with a good hug, to which she replies, "Well I'll call the house detective and tell him to put his arms around you." I'm choosing to think of the whole thing as a meet cute... Jerry woos Dale with flowers and then by paying off a hansom cab driver to give him the cab so that Jerry can drive Dale to the stables the next day. Dale discovers Jerry is her driver only when he starts to tap dance above her.

Dale starts to fall for Jerry at the stables when he dances with her in the rain.

Jerry: "May I rescue you?"

Dale: "...I prefer being in distress."

The thunder drives Dale to seek out Jerry for comfort in the gazebo in which they are both waiting out the storm, and pretty soon they are dancing and in love.

Happiness leads to mistaken identity and anger, though, when it turns out that Dale is Madge's friend. And Dale, never having met Madge's husband, thinks that Jerry is really Horace. She is suddenly horrified by his advances, slaps him, and gives him the motivation he needs to fly off to Italy to continue to woo her. He has no idea what he did to make her so mad.

The rest of the movie is all about mistaken identity and is, in my opinion, hilarious. It also seems to have pretty much the same cast as my other favorite mistaken identity movie, The Gay Divorcee, also a must-see.

Dale tells Madge that Madge's husband is chasing her:

"Really, I didn't know he was capable of that much activity... Did he catch you?"

Jerry wants to propose to the still confused Dale:

"Alright, you go find all about her past, and I'll go find out about her future."

Jerry and Dale dance with a crazy dress Dale is being payed to model:

And Dale receives nutty advice from Madge about how to protect herself from further advances:

"Here or there, as long as you remain a spinster you're fair game for any philandering male... You know um, what you really should have is a husband you can call your own."

Ahhh, what a movie. I will definitely see this again someday.

The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941)

2010-11-07T17:13:00.000-08:00

What an annoying movie. My quest to find an old an un-insane Bette David movie led me to this accidental find while browsing in the library. Sometimes there is a reason for not having heard of a movie.

Joan Winfield (Bette Davis) is an heiress about to elope with a band leader she has only known for a few weeks. Her oil rich father does not approve. When Joan and her fiance hire a pilot to fly them to Vegas for a quick wedding, hilarity ensues. Pilot Steve Collins (James Cagney) has just lost his plane to creditors. What to do? Call up Joan's dad of course and offer to fly her to her dad rather than to Vegas. Collins charges $10 per pound, just the right amount to pay his creditors. Joan's father thinks this sounds good because, "She won't weigh so much after an all night trip."

Joan doesn't much appreciate having her fiance tricked out of the plane and then being kidnapped. Her early attempt to jump out of the plane backfires, though, when Steve loses control of the plane trying to stop her and they crash land in the desert. There is a running gag in which Joan and Steve take turns falling on cacti throughout the movie. The cacti get their own dopey music, and Joan, while she still hates Steve, gets to lie across his lap while he picks prickers out of her butt. All while going through his picnic basket of fattening food... Steve is still hoping to get more money upon delivering her.

The dopey cacti music was just one sign that this was a dopey movie. Joan and Steve spend some time with an old hermit living in a ghost town, they cave in an old mine, there is a joke about marriage: "One of you's gettin' married, the other's going to jail. So you really got a lot in common," and eventually the characters don't couple up as originally planned. A slapstick comedy that caused more groaning and cringing than laughing. One star, and I don't really want to see this again. Still in search of entertaining early Bette Davis movies...

Alice in Wonderland (1933)

2010-10-27T17:03:00.000-07:00

It is a good thing that the 1933 "live action" movie of Alice in Wonderland opens with paired photographs of the characters and the actors who play them. With all of those masks, how would we ever find Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, and the others?

This is a movie to watch. If you love Alice in Wonderland, watch it. If you are entertained by your favorite actors doing unusual things, watch it. I fall into both categories, and I will admit to watching it mostly for Cary Grant. I am still a far way off from my goal of seeing all of his films.

In this adaptation, Alice takes a nap on a snowy day and wakes up to climb through a looking glass into Looking Glass Land, where we get to see so much perfect Alice:

*Alice is declared to be a volcano when she picks up some chess pieces to move them in an attempt to be helpful.

*"Goodbye dear feet."

*A terrific conversation with Caterpillar, Ed Sparks

*Edward Everett Horton (who I am coming to know as one of my favorite character actors) as the Mad Hatter:

*And Gary Cooper as a charming White Knight, possibly my favorite character (and Alice's) in this adaptation

*And the reason for my watching this movie: "Or shall the mock turtle sing?"

Oh, please!

Four stars for a great story (of course), fun costumes, and actors who seem to be enjoying themselves in their silly costumes. I hope to see this again.

On a side note, I've been thinking a lot about Cary Grant singing. His characters sometimes sing in the shower (Mr. Blandings, Charade, North by Northwest)... now he sings a very silly song as the Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland. Aside from Kiss and Make Up, is his singing always meant to be comedic? Then I found this while searching for Alice photos:

Cary Grant sings FCC Regulations ("Dinosaur Gardens" blog, 2006) Oh, fun!

The Great Escape (1963)

2010-10-22T15:58:00.000-07:00

Four stars, and I would definitely see this again, even though I don't usually like war movies. I had two reasons for wanting to see The Great Escape: a long-time love of Nick Park's Chicken Run and a recent viewing of The Adventures of Pete and Pete episode "Grounded for Life" (season 2, episode 1). Both drew inspiration from The Great Escape, and I wanted to see it for myself.

The Great Escape is just a really clever movie. It is also almost three hours long, so here are some highlights...

*The Germans have built a brilliant new camp from which they think no captured officers can escape ("we have in effect put all our eggs in one basket"). First day open: 7 unsuccessful attempts, including men under branches in trucks and men trying to join a Russian work line. Hilts (Steve McQueen) tests weaknesses in the guards' line of sight with a baseball, earning him 20 days in semi-isolation.

*Clever ways of working on three tunnels while remaining unnoticed... carrying pouches of dirt in your pant legs to dump in the garden (see also Pete and Pete)... hammering during a singing of the Christmas carol "Oh come all ye faithful..."

*And, oh, the tunnel and the characters...

Recommended viewing order:

1) The Great Escape

2) Chicken Run

3) Pete and Pete's "Grounded for Life"

Bells Are Ringing (1960)

2010-10-16T16:14:00.000-07:00

This movie has all the right ingredients for a fun comedy... Judy Holliday, silly plot twists... But the songs almost kill it. I guess when you put Dean Martin in a movie, you have to make him sing something. The songs are ridiculous and often painful, though. They are vehicles for predictable and sometimes nauseating rhymes. So three stars for Judy Holliday and some funny ideas... subtract one star for dreadful songs... Two stars. I might be willing to watch it again.

Ella (Judy Holliday) works for an answering service called "Susanswerphone." She is very good at taking people's messages and making wake-up calls. What she is not good at is dating. Susan keeps setting her up with nice men, and the dates all end up being disastrous - everything short of setting herself on fire. Ella just finds herself unable to talk to men in person. "You know, you're a good listener. That's an art in itself... helps to build the other person's ego," says her clueless date at the beginning of this film. Ella suffers through the date, of course managing to catch her dress on fire on the way out of the restaurant. Ella shines on the phone, though. She manages to get involved in all of her clients' life stories. She even falls in love with one and has to put on lipstick before she calls him. Sadly, though, she speaks to him in an old lady voice, and he calls her Mom. Leading us to the first dreadful song:

*I'm in love with "Plaza 0 double 4 double 3" She muses about whether he's 6'4" or 4'3". Oh, she even sings part of the song to a canary.

*And then the client, Jeffrey Moss (Dean Martin) sings to himself in the mirror: "You gotta do it" Seems he's a struggling playwright.

The plot picks back up again when the ladies of Susanswerphone are accused of being a front for a "lonely hearts club." There must be no meeting up with any male clients or "you and the madam are going to be taking calls at the detention home."

It turns out there is something nefarious going on at Susanswerphone, though. A bookie charms Sue into letting him run what she thinks is a record company out of the office. Really, he has developed a code in which different bets are called different composers, pieces, etc. This leads us to the next scary song:

"It's a simple little system," a partially spoken word song in which many sketchy bookies sing about their tricky code.

Jeffrey Moss leaves his phone unplugged one day, missing his wake-up call, and we get to watch Ella crawl around on his floor after she breaks in to wake her up. He wakes up, doesn't know she's "Mom," and a romance begins. How does she know so much about him? "I'm very intuitive." What will come of her having met up with a male client?

*"So that's what he looks like..." Sadly, the comic scene above includes this dreadful song before Jeffrey wakes up.

Ella teaches Jeffrey that you can say hello to strangers on the street. He is so in love after this ("If I couldn't believe in you after everything that's happened to me today, I'd crumble away like an old sponge cake."), that he just has to sing...

*"I got a girl," which includes the lyric, "she's got a lot to recommend her for a girl."

Then we have a song-writing dentist, the "cha cha cha," a dance in the park, a very bizarre song about dropping names, and another scary number called "He's in love with Melisande Scott."

Judy Holliday rescues the movie again near the end, though, with some great physical comedy. I'm upping my verdict to "would definitely watch again," but I will be laughing at, not always with.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)

2010-09-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

A Hitchcock slapstick comedy... fascinating. Hitchcock's only comedy... I can kind of see why. Having said that, the movie wasn't un-funny, it just didn't live up to my slapstick expectations. It kept falling short. Carole Lombard is fantastic with slapstick (Nothing Sacred), but there wasn't enough for her to do here.

When we meet Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery) they are holed up in their bedroom. One of the rules of their marriage is, "You are not allowed to leave the bedroom after a quarrel unless you've made up," and they had a fight two days ago. While the help watches for them to emerge and Mr. Smith's law firm panics over his absence, Mr. and Mrs. Smith finally reconcile, agreeing that their rules for marriage have once again helped them to trust and love each other. Before Mr. Smith leaves for work, though, Mrs. Smith reminds them of their "no lying" rule, and asks Mr. Smith to honestly tell her whether he would marry her all over again. Mr. Smith very naively answers that although he loves her, if he had it to do all over again, he would hold onto the single life. Oops.

Upon arriving at work, Mr. Smith is then visited by a lawyer come to tell him that, guess what, his marriage license isn't valid. It turns out all people who got married in 1937 in Nevada with an Idaho license are not really married and that "it'd be better if everybody kind of got married again...to be on the safe side." Oops again. Mr. Smith is kind of excited about the idea of dating his wife again and doesn't seem to plan to tell her right away. The lawyer happens to be a family friend of his wife, though, and stops by to see her next. Mrs. Smith's mother is horrified, demanding that her daughter not spend another night with her husband until things are righted. Mrs. Smith is convinced that, despite the morning conversation, of course her "husband" will whisk her off to City Hall that very night after dinner. Otherwise: scandal.

But, the dinner doesn't live up to expectations, and there is no proposal. Instead, Mr. Smith tries to lure his "wife" into the bedroom. Horror! Mrs. Smith tells him what she knows and accuses him of having tried to use her "and then throw me away like a squeezed lemon." Mr. Smith is banished to a room at the men's club, and Mrs. Smith decides that maybe she would like to date other men. Mr. Smith spends the rest of the movie trying to win his wife back. At one point he even tells her, "From now on we're just friends." Her response:"Not necessary."

The favorite scene for both me and David involved Mr. Smith pretending to be deep in conversation with a pretty lady seated near him in a restaurant. Not only is his wife not jealous, but the pretty lady eventually turns around and notices the creep pretending to whisper in her ear. The scene below was pretty funny, too:
So all in all, only two stars, but I would probably watch this again, and I think all Hitchcock fans should be aware of his venture into slapstick.

Swing Time (1936)

2010-08-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

To cuff or not to cuff? Another silly, but fun, film. I found it was best not to think too much about the plot.

Lucky (Fred Astaire) is about to get married, but his band members are concerned marriage will get in the way of the band's future. The film opens with Lucky's band members very skillfully tricking him out of getting to his wedding on time just by drawing cuffs onto the pant legs of a man in a magazine and telling Lucky that cuffed pants are in. Lucky has to go off and get his pants cuffed (minutes before the wedding, we are led to believe), discovers his pants are un-cuffable, and misses his wedding. He is then told that he has to raise a whole lot of money before he can be allowed to try to marry his spurned fiance again. So Lucky goes off to New York with the band to play and gamble, and he meets Penny (Ginger Rogers).

Penny is a dance instructor and wants nothing to do with Lucky after he annoys her on the street. Lucky pretends to need dance lessons, though, messes with her for a while, and then before you know it, they are an amazing team.

Lucky starts to think that maybe he doesn't want to raise all that money to marry his old fiance. I appreciated that Astaire and Rogers sang and danced to "A Fine Romance," a song that I love, during a snowy getaway together. Not the most exciting dance ever, but fun. And they got to wear fantastic hats.
Then suddenly, over an hour into the film, blackface? Why? Apparently the scene is some loved tribute to Mr. Bojangles, and we're supposed to be really excited that Astaire can dance with shadow selves. Hmmm... It's just always a bit hard to forgive these moments. I know the film is old, but people still could have had more sense.

Fun film, but two stars. Not my favorite Astaire and Rogers plot.

Follow the Fleet (1936)

2010-07-24T06:47:00.000-07:00

Oh, I hope I never run out of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers movies. In this movie they play Bake and Sherry. Bake is in the Navy, Sherry is a dancer who once rejected Bake's marriage proposal. When Bake comes into town on shore leave, he runs into Sherry, and they both rethink their separation. Bake messes up Sherry's very important audition, though, and all bets are off. How do you say sorry? Give someone a monkey and screw with their next big audition, not necessarily in that order.
There was also a bizarre side-story involving Bake's friend Bilge, played by Randolph Scott. After having one great date with Sherry's sister Connie, he felt that he was still free to play the field, and she felt that they had made an amazing connection and were getting married. Bilge's thoughts on Connie's thoughts? "She's a swell kid, but she's serious... She's sappy like you [Bake] - she wants to get married." And oddly none of Connie's friends told her that she was being a bit silly fixing up her father's giant boat just for Bilge and waiting for his proposal after just one date. There wasn't even any word from him while he was back at sea, and still she waited. She was told oh, he's just being silly... He'll figure it all out in time. She is told to fight for her man. But she practically imagined him! Nonetheless... do you think she got him in the end?
While watching the movie, my dad was busy looking up information about it. Apparently the dress worn by Ginger Rogers when she and Fred Astaire danced to "Let's Face the Music and Dance" (above) was so heavily weighted that she had to learn how to move while wearing it. And apparently she bonked Fred Astaire in the face. It was weighted so it could then effortlessly do things like this:
...which is of course a very important part of a Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire movie.

Despite my love of the actors, I really want to give this movie one star. But I'm going to give it two stars due to the scene where they navy guys are all practicing for a benefit show on the ship deck, and some of the men have to be "dames." I really don't want to see it again, though. There were entertaining moments, but I think the whole buzz behind this movie is that it has what is considered to be one of Astaire and Rogers's best dance numbers (with the 25 pound dress). But that was not enough for me. I still love them in general, though!

Where the Boys Are (1960)

2010-07-09T00:43:00.000-07:00

Four "co-eds" from a fictional university in the midwest head to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break (which is still called spring vacation in 1960).

Apparently a wild spring break time in 1960 meant crowded beaches, public drunkenness, long discussions about sex while fending off the advances of young men, and limbo.
The four girls rent a hotel room and set about finding boys - all except the one who seems to be named Merritt - although that name seems preposterous - who is brainy and wants to study. But of course she ends up meeting someone, it's a silly teen beach movie!
The girls have the cutest outfits, the cutest lines...
MERRITT: Okay, what happened to you?
MELANIE: I've been dining, I've been dancing, I've been drinking! Shh!
MERRITT: (to Tuggle) Put on some coffee, I'll get her things off.
MELANIE: Mair I've been drinking grasshoppers! Mair have you ever tasted a grasshopper?
MERRITT: Not intentionally, no.
MELANIE: No, Mair no, not a grasshopper that hops, Mair, a grasshopper in a glass that's green!
TUGGLE: You'll be green, too, in the morning.

The upbeat story takes a dark turn towards the end that left me kind of green, myself. I started to give it three stars but I think that having date rape be part of a beach movie - with the message that you'll be ruined for life if you don't stay a virgin till you get a ring - is a little harsh, so I'm deducting a star.

Still, it's an entertaining look at what life might have looked like on the cusp of the sexual revolution when good girls were still supposed to be desperately trying to hold on to old-fashioned values against the turning tide and the evening's entertainment might include a live girl in a fish tank. How's a good girl to compete with a soaking wet dime-store version of Marilyn Munroe?
Two stars - might be persuaded to watch again...

Mame (1958)

2010-07-08T23:50:00.000-07:00

Few things to note right off the bat:
- this version is not the musical
- this is going in my top ten - or at least my top fifteen

Rosalind Russell plays Mame, the flamboyant single aunt into whose care Patrick Dennis is deposited after his father's death. Mame knows how to redecorate her large New York City home; Mame knows how to throw a party; Mame knows how to dress (the costumes in this one are a real treat), but what does Mame know about raising a child?

It turns out that Mame's frank manner and doting affection more than make up for her lack of experience. In a series of scenes from Patrick's life, we see him pulled between the staunchly conservative influence of the trustee of his father's estate "Uncle Dwight" and the flaming liberal influence of Mame.

It's a fun and funny series of incidents with lots of colorful characters and one very cute kid. I also loved the funky decor which almost functioned as an extra character. There are two long-suffering servant characters - a Chinese butler/valet and an Irish maid who are ridiculously and endearingly loyal. How they resisted making them sillier and more offensive I'll never know, but they aren't bad.

I am very fond of zany Aunt Mame and her antics. Four stars and I definitely plan to watch again.

The Wings of Eagles (1957)

2010-07-04T14:19:00.000-07:00

I could not finish watching this movie about a Navy pilot played by John Wayne. He's a maverick who likes to take risks and drive his wife crazy. There's a lot of stuff about the need to fund the Navy's airplanes and pilots and the politics surrounding that which I didn't care enough about to follow.

I plan to come back and finish it, but I might not. John Wayne is ALWAYS playing John Wayne and I guess I'm not as interested in how the Navy learned to land planes on boats as I thought I might be.
UPDATE: Well I did go back to this and skipped to the end to see what happens. Seems he ends up a big hero (surprise) and retiring with some impressive war wounds. At least I thought they were war wounds until I skipped around and discovered they were caused by a domestic accident. Also his long suffering wife is LONG-suffering.
I guess bio-pics tend to be like this: long and rambling and not making much sense or necessarily paying off the way you think they will.
One star, not planning to watch again.

1776, the Musical (1972)

2010-07-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

A musical comedy about the founding of the country? Sign me up for that! At present moment I am watching the decision to debate independence in congress be decided by Rhode Island after returning from the privy.

Ribald jokes, complaints about the plumbing and the flies - this is probably a pretty realistic portrayal of congress, actually. I know history has to be manipulated a little to allow for the right number of characters and things like rhymes in songs - but is that really much worse than the changes that are made in history books?
I was about to say something about this movie making history interesting to young people but since Kimberly just fell asleep I am going to abandon this line of thought.
Two stars for the movie, three stars for making me think about US history on Forth of July weekend.
Will probably try to watch again with the kids next week.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

2010-07-01T15:30:00.000-07:00

I think it's time for me to see a really really old Bette Davis movie. Perhaps one where she's not made up to look like a psychopath or acting the part of a psychopath. Because as good as she is at being a psychopath (and I really think she's one of the best), I think she may have done other work. Or has she?
Anyways, I did have to see this movie. It's well-known, and I hadn't seen it yet. And I did enjoy it. It just makes me wonder what else Bette Davis can do. This film is as creepy as the Baby Jane doll in the above photo. For an even creepier photo, search for color shots of Bette Davis's make-up on the internet. Davis plays an aging child star stuck caring for her crippled former grown-up star sister (Joan Crawford). While Joan Crawford's character is entirely dependent on Baby Jane, she is also more than a little afraid of her and is working hard on a plan to sell the house and move, sending the wacky Baby Jane to a place where she can be cared for.
Unfortunately, Baby Jane is not as dumb as she is insane. When she figures out what her sister is trying to do, she doesn't approve. And people start dying.

Three stars, and I would see it again, mostly to help others experience it.

Seconds (1966)

2010-06-13T06:39:00.001-07:00

Oh, creepy creepy movie...
"The Company" secretly and selectively offers people the chance to have a new life by placing them in new and younger bodies. One of many problems is the fact that once you are a part of The Company, you can never get out alive. Arthur is brought to The Company by a friend he had thought was dead, only to be drugged and then shown a video of himself raping a girl while drugged. The Company threatens to release the video should Arthur not go through with the process of being "reborn." Having no choice, Arthur is reborn as Tony (Rock Hudson) and sent off to California to live as a young and already established artist. A body is burned in a hotel room, and Arthur is declared officially dead.

Tony meets a girl, frolics in a "stomping on grapes in a barrel" orgy, and generally enjoys his youth, until he starts to realize the being reborn comes with psychological trauma. He makes a mess of things, drunkenly talking about his former life and even contacting his/ "Arthur's" wife. Eventually Tony wants to start over again, but will he be allowed? Evil laughter here.

I don't know. Two stars again. Very interesting idea, but very silly movie all in all. Will not watch again.

The Shaggy Dog (1959)

2010-06-12T14:28:00.000-07:00

The classic Disney tale of a boy changing into a sheepdog and back again at all the wrong times. Boys' dad has always hated dogs, boy wants to get the girl and tries to go to a dance, boy's brother enjoys having a secret new pet, boy would like to know how to break the spell, boy discovers shady plot while in dog form... Hilarity ensues...
Boy feels that when living as a dog, it is still important to continue with normal human hygiene...
Well... maybe because I did not watch this movie more than once as a kid, and I may have been a pretty old kid when that once came around, I'm not feeling very generous with stars. Perhaps two stars, because the special effects must have been exciting to create. I probably won't see this again unless I'm in the presence of little kids who are begging to see it.

Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964)

2010-06-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

Frank Sinatra, singing mobsters, Robin hood references... a perfect movie for me, or so I thought. I just can't give this movie more than one star, and I'm not sure I could ever sit through it again. I could definitely sit down with David and make him watch the silliest songs with me:

*The boardroom "one for all" song about how great it is to be a mobster, in which we realize that Guy Gisborne is played by Peter Falk, and that Peter Falk can't sing

*The song about playing pool: when Little John (Dean Martin) runs the table and joins Robbo's (Frank Sinatra's) gang
*Will Scarlet's (Sammy Davis, Jr.'s) song about how much he loves the sound of gun shuts... sung as he and Robbo's gang shoot up Guy Gisborne's gambling den (Barbara: "Tap dancing combined with shooting is just really weird.")

*The song about how bad a dresser Allen A. Dale (Bing Crosby) is, sung by Sinatra, Martin, and Crosby, as Crosby keeps jumping in the walk-in closet to put on funny clothes

*The song about how wonderful Robbo is for giving money to the home for orphaned boys... sung by... Bing Crosby and a troupe of orphans wearing hats like these ladies:

*The song about the evils of "Mr. Booze," sung in order to throw the police off the trail of the hidden gambling/drinking den

*And last but not least, the song sung by Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin dressed in Santa costumes when they have to go into hiding for their connections to a money laundering operation

There was one redeeming feature that made me laugh with and not at the movie: Occasionally the mobsters disappeared someone by putting their dead body in a cornerstone of a new building. This led to funny scenes at building dedications. But, why was this movie made? Has anyone else seen it?

Easy to Love (1953)

2010-06-11T07:11:00.002-07:00

Being a prop in a fancy resort is hard work. Julie (Esther Williams) and the other girls at Cypress Gardens perform many shows a day. When they're not in a show, they lounge about the grounds in fancy dresses as part of the scenery, posing for photographs and flirting with guests. As the star swimmer of Cypress Gardens, Julie's schedule is extra grueling... Here she is doing synchronized swimming in a lagoon of flower petals, when all she wants is to go out for a fun evening of her own. Or maybe spend a little time making her hard-working boss Ray (Van Johnson) jealous by going on a date with her flower petal companion.
When Julie threatens to quit because of how overworked she is, Ray offers to take her to New York. Julie thinks she has finally gotten Ray to appreciate and fall in love with her, but it turns out it's just a modeling/PR gig. Luckily for Julie, though, she meets a famous singer in New York who actively pursues her and finally makes Ray start to feel some pangs of jealousy.

Esther Williams. When did someone decide that synchronized swimming movies should be all the rage? Are there other synchronized swimming movie stars out there? In this movie, not only does Esther Williams get to float about in flower petals, but she gets to audition in a tank...
...and she performs in a water-ski extravaganza that I'm convinced defies the laws of physics.
What was possibly my favorite scene didn't even involve Esther Williams, though. It involved Julie's singer suitor singing a song called "That's What a Rainy Day is For" with a whole bunch of old ladies who must have been born in the 1800s to be so old in this movie. Cute song.

Maybe two stars. Some very entertaining stunts, but the love story was so unbelievable. I watched this with Barbara, and we kept turning to each other to say, "I don't understand why he likes her yet," or "Why does she like him?" The love story needs to be believable!!! And I don't appreciate lines like, "So you don't fight nature...You fight your wife." Sorry.

The Bad Seed (1956)

2010-06-11T07:11:00.001-07:00

My guitar teacher Sam has been telling me I need to see this movie for the past year. Apparently he and his siblings used to watch it every time it came on TV when they were growing up and tease each other about who was the bad seed. Apparently he thought it would be relevant to my life...

It was a fun movie, complete with ominous music, skipping, and pigtails. Rhoda is perfect. Neat, pretty, smart, charming... and sociopathic. Soon after meeting Rhoda, we learn that although she believes she deserved to win the penmanship medal at school, the medal has been awarded to Claude Daigle instead. And she is VERY angry. No matter how much curtseying and skipping and kissing of cheeks she does, we know she is very angry. Rhoda goes off to a school picnic, and Claude Daigle drowns off of a pier. Hmmm...

It doesn't take Rhoda's mom very long to figure out what Rhoda has done. Rhoda is creepy, and someone has actually died around her before. (Not to mention the mom's repressed memories of having been adopted out of a sociopathic family.) But what will Rhoda's mom do with her bad seed?

Three stars, and I could definitely imagine seeing this again!

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

2010-05-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

I won't be seeing this movie again. I can say I've seen the famous blowing dress scene and move on.
Richard Sherman's wife and son, along with all the wives and children of the New York businessmen, have left the city for the summer. So what are all the husbands to do? "Drinking, smoking, picking up girls, playing chopsticks..."
Richard Sherman wastes no time in getting to all of this, but it's okay, because he's been married for seven years, and it is a well-known fact that men experience a seven year itch and need to branch out a bit. And anyways, he just spends most of his time thinking about cheating and running around being sneaky... So no worries. Despite Richard's assertion that "no pretty girl wants me. She wants Gregory Peck," he quickly picks up his new upstairs neighbor Marilyn Monroe, known as "The Girl." Does she even have a name? She's ditzy, she wears sexy dresses, and she's willing to kiss him just for fun, because he's married and she doesn't have to worry about him proposing or anything. Richard narrates the whole movie. We hear his every thought. And I don't find him likeable. So can I give the movie zero stars?

Yes, I would have preferred:

Nothing Sacred (1937)

2010-05-13T18:16:00.000-07:00

Now I'm a fan of Carole Lombard. She's very funny. All the information that came along with this movie described it as a "screwball comedy," and it very much is, despite the fact that when we first meet Carole Lombard's character, Hazel Flagg, we think she is dying of radium poisoning.

Frederic March plays Wally Cook, a somewhat disgraced newspaper man who goes off to to redeem himself by finding the next big story... the story turns out to be bringing the ailing Hazel to New York City to show her the time of her life before she dies. New York loves Hazel...too bad she's not really sick.

We find out that Hazel isn't really sick pretty early on in the movie. When Wally comes to find her in her small Vermont hometown, Hazel has just learned from her doctor that he made a mistake with her diagnosis. Rather than being overjoyed at not being on her death bed, Hazel is disappointed to have to give up a trip to New York that she had been promised as a last wish. Then comes Wally offering her an amazing chance to be pampered in the city...

The Vermont scenes were a lot of fun. The townspeople do not appreciate a city newspaper man invading their space. He gets a lot of nasty looks, including a nasty look from the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. At one point, while Wally is walking down the street trying to find Hazel, a little boy runs out of his yard, bites Wally on the leg, and runs away again. Biting townspeople?

Just as much hilarity occurs in New York... of course Hazel and Wally fall for each other, and this leads Hazel to feel really guilty about pretending to be dying. So guilty she even tries to fake a suicide so she can remove herself from the situation. The only part of the "screwball comedy" I wasn't so fond of was the punching that went on between Wally and Hazel when Wally found out about the hoax. Don't punch people! Or spank people! "Give me your word of honor you won't try that again, or I'll spank your little..."
Two stars, but I would definitely see this again. Really, it was a very entertaining movie.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

2010-05-11T15:05:00.000-07:00

Life is grand... Dorothy (Jane Russell) and Lorelei (Marilyn Monroe) are off to Paris, and who happens to be on their ocean liner? The US Olympic team! Dorothy gets to cavort with the Olympians (there is even a gymnastics dance), while Lorelei says goodbye to her trusting fiance who will be staying at home.
Hilarity ensues as Lorelei becomes rather friendly with a rich old owner of a diamond mine (he gives her his wife's prized diamond tiara!), and Dorothy becomes smitten with a private detective hired by the father of Lorelei's fiance to track her every move.
The women have to become very crafty in order to evade jealous fiances, angry wives, incriminating rolls of film, and French prison sentences. "I can be smart when it's important, but most people don't like it." Doesn't that sound just like a Marilyn Monroe line?

Such a fun movie.

"Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend"

So yay! Four stars! Would watch again!

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2010-05-09T07:58:00.000-07:00

Daisy, Daisy,
Give me your answer do!
I'm half crazy,
All for the love of you!
It won't be a stylish marriage,
I can't afford a carriage
But you'll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle made for two.

Roberta (1935)

2010-05-05T17:07:00.000-07:00

Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers... of course I had to see this movie. Huck Haines (Astaire) travels with his band, The Wabash Indianians, and his friend John Kent (Randolph Scott) to Paris for a gig. Unfortunately, almost the second they step off the ocean liner, the owner of the club where they were supposed to play becomes horrified to learn that they are in fact Indianians and not Indians. The band tries to woo the club owner with a bizarre act in which they become a human piano...but to no avail.

With no more gig, John and Huck rush off to find John's aunt Roberta, who just happens to own a fashionable clothing store in Paris. Roberta is delighted to see her favorite nephew and says that she will try to help them find a new gig through her connections. It turns out that the band doesn't need Roberta's direct help, though, because out in the lobby they find the Comtesse Scharwenka (Ginger Rogers) complaining loudly and obnoxiously about a dress that has not come out quite right. The Comtesse is merely pretending to be Polish nobility to make her singing act more intriguing. Really she is from Indiana and happens to be the long lost close friend/next door neighbor of Huck. And she can get the band back into the very night club from which they were tossed for not being Indians. And I haven't even mentioned that Irene Dunne plays Stephanie, who works for Roberta. Stephanie and John fall in love at first sight, complications to follow. One of the largest complications seems to be that John is a "hick" with an attitude about fashion, and Stephanie is a Russian princess in exile. Hmmm.

The dancing was, as usual, exciting, especially a very cool tap dance pictured above and a dance to "I Won't Dance." And then there was the highly entertaining fashion show. My favorite quote from the fashion show is actually from my roommate Barbara: "Oh, a bird died." There were a lot of fur and feathers.

Other good fashion quotes from without the movie include:

"It's more stimulating to the imagination if clothes clothe." (John is VERY against skimpy dresses, and this fact leads to some of the plot twists of the movie.)

"[Women] can pack their own junk." (about a dress with pockets)

The movie also swung towards schmaltzy, though. Stephanie sings mournful songs, Roberta dies, everyone is tragically misunderstood. All except Huck and the Comtesse, that is. Two stars for my favorite dancers. Not sure I could watch again.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

2010-05-05T17:06:00.000-07:00

It seems (conversation with Amy) that a classic movie on this blog is a movie made before Amy and I were born. So...A thoroughly fun movie. Four stars, and I would probably watch this again, although it would probably be most fun if I wait forty years and forget who the murderer is. The chances of forgetting, though, are probably not so high, seeing as I (very smugly) guessed what was going on while watching this time (and no, I have not read the book).

Without giving anything away... Poirot is traveling on a train with a number of interesting characters... One fellow traveler confides to Poirot that he has been receiving death threats and wants Poirot to take on his case and protect him... Poirot refuses... A blizzard traps the train in the middle of nowhere... The man is found dead in his cabin... Who did it?

I loved the interrogation scenes and Poirot's helper who yelled, "He/she did it!" after ever interrogation. Murder aside, this movie also made me want to sit in a luxurious dining car and sip tea with my fellow travelers. Not sure about the sleeping cars.

Royal Wedding (1951)

2010-04-26T18:01:00.000-07:00

Oh, what a wonderful movie...

Tom and Ellen Bowen (Fred Astaire and Jane Powell) are a famous brother and sister dancing act in New York. Their agent's brother happens to be an agent in London (a very odd running joke in which Keenan Wynn plays the agent twin brothers and has them have odd phone conversations with their vastly different accents and slang). The British agent invites Tom and Ellen to perform in London for the month leading up to Princess Elizabeth's wedding. Before Ellen can leave she has to bid farewell to at least three guys she's dating. Apparently she's quite the player. As her brother says about the newest guy, "This'll probably be one of those long affairs that drags on a whole weekend." While sequentially saying goodbye to each hopeful young man before she boards her ship to England, Ellen overhears a dashing stranger doing the same thing with a string of women.

It turns out they are destined for each other. What begins with, "I surveyed the whole boat...you're the most attractive woman on board...I thought, too bad she's married... this is going to be awkward," turns into a relationship that continues in London and causes them both to drop their player ways (but not without some hesitation)...

"I'm in love with you?"

"Well aren't you?"

While Ellen tries out her relationship, Tom falls for an engaged dancer in their show. She makes him so happy he can do this:

Turns out Tom's beloved's fiance has been in Chicago for two years, and she hasn't heard from him the past two months... Hmmm...Could things be looking up for Tom?

Anyways, I truly believe that Fred Astaire could dance on a ceiling if he wanted to. This movie had great dialogue, fun dance numbers, and one of my new favorite actresses.

Four stars! I would watch this again.

The Broadway Melody (1929)

2010-04-25T23:54:00.000-07:00

I watched this with Margo.

Two sisters, Queenie and Harriet, move to New York to make it big in a thinly-disguised Ziegfield's Follies. Harry, the older sister, is the manager of the act and protector of Queenie. Harriet doesn't realize it but she's out of touch with the big city and her temper is much too hot for her own good. But Queenie is pretty enough and knows how to sweet-talk, so she talks them both into the show, but lets it seem like Harriet's doing to protect her pride.

Eddie, Harriet's fiance and a promising songwriter, falls in love with Queenie, and she falls in love with him - but they try to keep it from going anywhere for Harriet's sake. Instead, Queenie lets herself be wooed by a gross older man who just wants her to be his mistress. This drives Harriet crazy with worry but every time Eddie is about to come clean to Harriet he sees how upset she is and he can't do it to her. Things get worse and worse till Harriet catches on and convinces Eddie that she has only been interested in him for his show-biz connections all along and never was in love with him. This is all the more pathetic because her acting is so terrible that only a man desperate for an excuse to get out of his engagement would believe her.

Eddie runs off and rescues Queenie from the evil sugar daddy and they live happily ever after. We see at the end that Queenie knows the truth - that she got both the fame and the man that her sister longed for - but since they both know Eddie doesn't love Harriet, Queenie accepts her sister's generous gift.

It was sooooo slooooow and loooong and the acting was awful and over-done and the sisters have really strange, grating voices and there are a lot of scenes that just don't need to be there, but it was a big showy show so they all probably seemed important at the time.

Three stars for the story, the costumes and the classic show business story. Won't watch again.

The Sound of Music (1965)

2010-04-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

When I was three we owned this record and I remember not understanding that I was not Maria. There was no clear separation between me and the movie. I was The Sound of Music and The Sound of Music was me.

We had this record:

And I don't remember a time when I didn't know every word to every song. I'm quite sure that I learned the words "dapper" "naive" and "ken" from 'Sixteen Going on Seventeen' and I'm sure that those three words alone could have been responsible for my reputation as a precocious three-year-old.

I've been to the sing-along Sound of Music but until two years ago I didn't own the movie. I never had. In a weird way it felt redundant. I own this movie in my head. If I'm knocked unconscious and start to ascend a tunnel of light I'll probably wake up singing "Climb ev'ry mountain" - it's that kind of thing for me.

Did I mention that the Mother Abbess is played by Peggy Wood? That's my grandmother's name.

I am going to put a limit on the ways I can love this movie, I am limiting it to ten.
These are a few of my favorite things:

1. The Sound of Music - the music. This movie is full of happy songs. There are a lot of dark, sad moments to this movie - the girl doesn't fit in at the Abbey, where she lives, she doesn't fit in at the place where she's sent to be a governess, but she's always so exuberant! The opening score is played over shots of the Swiss Alps and it's just this feeling of awe you can't help, which is exactly what Maria wants to sing about all the time.

"My heart wants to skip like a brook that trips over stones on its way, to sing through the night, like a lark that is learning to pray!" Put simply, it's a show-tune hymn, and a great one. People should sing it in church.

Because this is essentially a movie about music bringing people together and saving them from Nazis, there are too many other great songs to name and yes a few slow ones that I didn't care for as a child but now appreciate. And then there's Edelweiss - if your heart doesn't break when they sing that song at the end of the movie, I'm revoking it!

2. How do you solve a problem like - Nuns. How can you not love nuns? They are like the opposite of a pin-up poster - they are everything womanly that is not sexual. They're motherly and wise, girlish and innocent, demanding and patient, they nag, they gossip, they whine, and in the end of the movie they are heroic and clever and sneaky and you realize they are made of steel. Nuns! (someone is going to say, clearly I have never gone to Catholic school - clearly I have not).

3. Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes. The kids in uniform! They are great - kids marching in a line and in matching costumes were so appealing when I was a kid. It was like watching a kid review or a kid army. And I still love the matching curtain-clothes - don't put it past me to have my own version for my kids.

Apparently Christopher Plummer was quite the player...
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/12/21/091221ta_talk_parker

But back to the list:

4. Uncle Max
He's a smooth cat, Uncle Max - the talent agent and perennial mooch. I bet the real Uncle Max moved to Hollywood to escape the Nazis and became someone like Sam Goldwyn. True, he's only out for himself but that makes him somewhat impartial. He cracks mean little jokes with the baroness but ultimately his fondness for a good musical act trumps his friendship with her and her lovely money. And if not for him, how would they ever have escaped at the end? Gotta love Uncle Max.

5. There's a ball. They throw a ball. They're just like - you know what would be fun? A big party in that big ballroom. And then they throw a ball. Complete with formal dinner and wonderful outfits and entertainment and Austrian folk dances.

6. There's a wedding. Any movie with a ball and a wedding is a winner in my book. The wedding is awesome, too - just her train alone is enough to bring a tear to my eye, but the organ playing "how do you solve a problem like maria" - all I can say is - why on earth didn't I think of having that as my processional? Jessica, take note, you still have a chance!

7. Free the children manifesto. Children hanging from trees and overturning rowboats. This is how life was meant to be lived. Up until the turn of the century, children were to be "seen and not heard" - kept apart from their parents in upper-class homes and trained to act like miniature adults. Fraulein Maria is a renegade, she's a local girl who ran around in the woods singing out loud to the mountains like a crazy person and she believes firmly that all children should be allowed to run around acting like crazy people. Children appreciate and respond to this message. They like to be crazy.

8. Love story #1 - star-crossed lovers Franz and Liesl. They meet in secret and fall in love - they have their first kiss during a thunderstorm, for pete's sake! Then he becomes a stupid Nazi - in part because the Austrians see him as a boy but the Nazi's will give him authority to rat people out. So instead of growing into a principled man, he'll become a soldier for the first army that will take him. Liesl can't believe he'd betray her family and her father and almost costs her family their lives because of it. Poor Liesl and, for that matter, poor Franz. He's just a boy being manipulated by a deeply evil regime.

9. Love story #2 - The Captain and Maria - he's her boss, he's handsome and wealthy and authoritative and precise. She's a free-spirited would-be nun who can't stop herself from contradicting anyone, even authority figures. But when they sing, they can't help but see each other as kindred spirits. Most of all, she truly loves his children, even to the point of risking her own job to argue with him on their behalf. She makes him realize that he loves his kids, too, and needs to be a better father to them. And she's just a simple country girl but you realize, he's really not fond of the city anyway - he likes nature and folk songs and traditional Austrian things - including traditional Austrian girls like Maria.

10. Sad/Happy Ending. So the Nazis invade Austria, but the family escapes. The real-life family survived, came to America, made their living performing, were happy and successful. But the Nazis are real, and they go on to do terrible things, and not everyone escaped. Austrians who had to give up their nation and leave their homes were the first victims of Hitler, and their hardships seem minor compared to others - but just the glimpse of the totalitarianism of the Nazi occupation - the flags everywhere, the spies, the insistence on a public show of loyalty and deference...sends a chill down your spine. Europe should have taken notice sooner. The Nazis started out by breaking spirits and banishing families and ended by bringing more evil into the world than many people had ever imagined existed in the human heart. When they sing Edelweiss, a folksong, they get to the "bless my homeland forever" part and you realize it's a secret protest. The voices in the crowd join in and sing and you sense the Nazis are not going to be able to keep these people down. Probably Victor Laszlo was in the crowd. Surreptitious subversion of cultural imperialism, rule-breaking nuns, hiking over the Alps to freedom...it's inspirational on top of everything else.

How can you not love this movie? I think I watched it once a year when I was little, and I'm sure I could sing you all of the songs if asked.

Four stars. Clearly another movie to watch over and over.

Flying Down to Rio (1933)

2010-04-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

Ah, movies from the thirties. This is what I should be watching more of. Roger (Gene Raymond) is the conductor of a band and quite a player. When he spots Belinha (Delores Del Rio) winking at him from her table during a performance, it doesn't take him very long to leave the conducting to Fred (played by Fred Astaire) and sweep her up into his arms for a dance. News travels fast throughout the hotel. When the first comment, that Belinha, the niece of a wealthy Brazilian woman, is dancing with a musician, eventually reaches Belinha's aunt, the comment has run through the rumor mill and turned into "Belinha is dancing with a gigolo." The aunt rushes down to the dining room to put an end to the dance, and a romance/battle of words has begun. I was loving the movie... the first pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, funny banter, amazing hats...

I was so happy... until I got to the spanking and the racism, all of which happened within a span of about five minutes. I will explain:

The spanking: Belinha needs to get home to Brazil fast. Her father needs her. It just so happens that Roger is a pilot, and that he and the band already happen to be going to Rio to play at the opening of a new hotel there. Roger convinces Belinha to fly in his two person plane (although he at first doesn't tell her he is the pilot and disguises himself in his flying gear so her aunt will let her go with him). Belinha is perfectly happy to discover that Roger is the pilot, but when Roger has to make an emergency landing on what they believe to be a remote desert island, all turns sour between them. Roger makes his engine trouble last by purposely losing an essential hose. Then he plays romantic music to get Belinha to make out with him. And then... she says something along the lines of, "No no no...I cannot do this...My family has arranged a marriage for me...I am engaged...We must never see each other again." Roger doesn't take well to Belinha's protest, Belinha slaps him, and then he throws her over his knee and spanks her a whole bunch of times reprimanding her for telling him off. Needless to say, when they have to spend the night on the island, she stays far away from him.

The racism: The morning after the spanking, Belinha looks into the trees and sees four or five black men looking back at her. She runs into Roger's arms screaming about wild men and cannibals. When Roger goes back to investigate, he finds out that she was not seeing cannibals, she was just seeing resort employees. They are in Haiti right next to a golf resort. This was supposed to be a funny joke.

The rest of the movie did have more entertaining moments, though. The hotel happens to be owned by Belinha's father, Roger happens to be friends with the fiance, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance, all while Roger and Belinha spar and can't take their eyes off of each other.

The best part of the movie was definitely when the band saves the hotel by creating the most spectacular opener ever: scantily clad girls dancing and doing acrobatics on the wings of planes in flight. At one point some of their clothes are even carried off by parachutes. At one point one girl almost plummets to her death and has to be caught by people on the plane below. Video below:

I also love the way in which Belinha's fiance finally gives her up...a parachute is involved. Two stars for silly acrobatics and fun. I could see myself watching this again, despite the horrifying parts.

Easy to Wed (1946)

2010-04-23T06:41:00.000-07:00

I can only hope that on the day of my wedding David and I get to perform a long song and dance number for all of our guests. In fabulous technicolor costumes.

This movie is Libeled Lady in color... Or so I think. I got this movie because it was a recommended Esther Williams movie and found out upon reading the DVD sleeve that it is in fact a re-make of Libeled Lady. After watching the trailer for Libeled Lady and reading Amy's blog post, I think it is pretty safe to say that Easy to Wed is just a remake in color...mostly the same dialogue, with a few changes: Lucille Ball for Rita Hayworth, duck hunting for angling, swimming stunts for no swimming stunts... The older movie does have William Powell and Myrna Loy, though, so I am ready to believe that it was a better movie. Now of course I very much need to see Libeled Lady to compare.
The movie starts with a slander suit. Connie Allenbury (Esther Williams) and her wealthy father are suing a newspaper for two million dollars for publishing an article that called Connie a husband stealer. Warren Haggerty comes up with a brilliant plan to save the paper... hire back Bill Chandler (Van Johnson), a reporter he had long ago fired and a man just sleazy enough to be willing to trick Connie Allenbury into actually stealing a husband, thus ruining her lawsuit. For Connie to actually steal a husband, though, Bill needs to be a husband. Haggerty gets his fiance, Gladys (Lucille Ball) to marry Bill so that Gladys can then discover Bill cheating on her with Connie.

Bill goes to great lengths to win the trust of Connie and her father. He even pretends to be an expert duck hunter, a lie which gets him invited for a weekend of hunting at the Allenbury cabin. While he's at the cabin, he realizes that Connie isn't actually the spoiled brat she appeared to be. She just comes across that way to protect herself after years of being harassed by men who want her for her money.
Once Connie trusts Bill, she drops her stuck-up act and...
Now Bill has a problem, though. He is actually in love with Connie and no longer wants to go through with the plan. Much hilarity ensues. Some of it involves Bill and Gladys pretending to be ducks to learn the art of duck hunting. (Long video, but fun!)

So three stars, because it really was a funny movie. One of those stars is for a scene near the beginning of the movie when Esther Williams water skis down a giant slide standing not on water skis, but on a man's back. I'm not sure I'll see it again, though. I will see Libeled Lady.

The Devil's Disciple (1959)

2010-04-23T06:39:00.000-07:00

I have a fascination with Revolutionary American history (especially Thomas Jefferson), so I got very excited when one of the blogs I occasionally read (http://boston1775.blogspot.com/ or http://americanrevolutionblog.blogspot.com/...sadly I can't find the post again) mentioned a movie set in 1777 in New England. Not only did it have a revolutionary theme, but it starred Burt Lancaster (known to me as an acrobatic pirate), Kirk Douglas, and Laurence Olivier. No Thomas Jefferson in this movie, but it seemed like it might be entertaining. It was, but possibly not in the way intended by the director. It contains lines like, "Stop howling woman!"

The movie is actually based on a play by George Bernard Shaw. Burt Lancaster (the man in the center who looks as though he would be comfortable swinging from mast) plays a minister, Anthony Anderson. Kirk Douglas plays Richard Dudgeon, "the devil's disciple," a man who left town long ago because he was tired of the religious ways of his family. Laurence Olivier is a relatively kindly British officer. Who is that woman under Kirk Douglas's arm? Why, it is Judith Anderson, the wife of the minister... This picture seems to hint at the odd love triangle that makes up part of the movie. Anderson and his wife are dragged into rebellion when the Laurence Olivier character hangs Dudgeon's father and leaves the body on display as a warning to all would-be rebels. Dudgeon returns to town to cut down his father's body and bring it to Anderson for a burial. When the British soldiers eventually realize that there is a new gravestone in the graveyard with the name of the man who was supposed to be hanging on display, they went to the Anderson home to arrest Anderson, whom they believed must have been behind cutting the man down.

Side note: I thought that Kirk Douglas's character was reminiscent of Beetlejuice and other Michael Keaton characters. Barbara felt that he reminded her of Matthew McConaughey.

In any case, when the British soldiers arrive at Anderson's house, Anderson is not home. He has gone to talk with a sick neighbor. Who is home? Dudgeon and Judith Anderson. Anderson thought that Dudgeon would be safe in his house, and instructed Judith to serve Dudgeon tea while he was gone, despite the fact that Judith claims to find him slimy and creepy. Dudgeon pretends to be Anderson and is arrested. It remains unclear throughout the rest of the movie whether Dudgeon has done this to get closer to Judith (about whom he makes many remarks throughout the film) or because he cannot help himself from protecting the life of another man. Long story short, Judith of course becomes infatuated with Dudgeon for what he has done, and Anderson goes into hiding and becomes a rebel, finally becoming the pirate Burt Lancaster that I know and love. But will Dudgeon hang? And will Judith ever love her husband again? Since I am only giving this movie one star and am not recommending it for viewing, I'll tell you. No and yes. All ends well in Revolutionary America.

(The star is for the best part of the movie...little paper action figures that act out marching and battles on top of a map during narrated portions between scenes.)

The Fly (1958)

2010-04-18T16:07:00.000-07:00

Reasons that the original The Fly (1958) is classier than the Jeff Goldblum remake (1986):

1958- The Fly takes place in Montreal, and the characters have names like Francois, Phillippe, and Andre and live in a fancy house.
1986- The Fly takes place in a scary-looking loft, and Jeff Goldblum refers to himself as Brendel-fly.

1958- Classical music plays in the background.

1986- Yelling, screaming...

1958- The female lead wears a bow in her hair and bathrobes that are as fancy as her evening gowns.

1986- Jeff Goldblum picks up a trashy woman in bar who is only interested in him after he rips another man's s arm off with his newfound fly strength.

1958- Again, the clothes are quite fancy... especially when the main characters go to the opera.

1986- Not only are the clothes not as classy, but Jeff Goldblum spends a lot of time out of his clothes. Even while hugging a baboon.

1958- Andre and his wife drink champagne that has been sent through Andre's transporter.

1986- Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum eat transported steak and discuss wanting to eat each other.

1958- After Andre is combined with the fly, he wears a black cloth over his head and conceals his fly leg in his overcoat.

1986- We watch parts of Jeff Goldblum's human body fall off, and he stores the disintegrating parts in the medicine cabinet. He tries to make Geena Davis (and us) look at them.

1958- Underneath his black cloth, Andre has a cute, fluffy fly head.

1986- Jeff Goldblum looks like rotting flesh, even at the end of his transformation.

1958- Andre eats under his black cloth and has his wife go into the other room while he is eating.

1986- Jeff Goldblum throws up on his food to digest it. Geena Davis watches. We watch.

1958- Everyone is cheerful, even in the face of great tragedy.

1986- Geena Davis cries throughout the whole second half of the movie.

1958- A fly with Andre's head and arm is about to be eaten by a spider when it is put out of its misery by the inspecter and Francois.

1986- Geena Davis guns down Jeff Goldblum after failing to abort their possible mutant baby.
So, classy yes. But two stars, and that's it for me.

In This Our LIfe (1942)

2010-03-10T16:10:00.000-08:00

The commentary tells me that Bette Davis referred to this movie as being one of the worst movies ever made. The commentator, however, seems to believe it was one of the most wonderful movies ever made. I only made it through about ten minutes of commentary, but she was full of praise for cinematography, characters, and the ways the plot is set up. Watch and decide.

The melodrama is summed up for me by the exchange below:

Stanley (Bette Davis) has just thrown a fit about not wanting to leave a restaurant yet, even though her new husband Peter needs to get home and to bed for work the next day. Peter leaves miserable and without her. When he gets home, however, he finds that she has jumped into her car and sped home to beat him there...
Peter: You ought to be spanked.
Stanley: For being a good wife?
Peter: For making me love you so much.

In this film, Stanley cheats on her fiance and runs off with the husband of her sister Roy (Olivia deHavilland). Roy is heartbroken, and takes solace in the arms of Stanley's ex-fiance when what starts out as a comforting friendship between the two of them turns into a romance. Stanley, meanwhile, cannot settle down... she burns through her marriage (see the labels for a spoiler), and returns home to wreak more havoc. Stanley may or may not want her old fiance back, may never learn to drive safely, and may never learn to be ethical. By the end of this movie, Stanley's behavior threatens not only the happiness of her own family, but the future of a family (mother=Hattie McDaniel) which has worked for Stanley's family Stanley's whole life and adding a theme of societal racism to the film. Much drama.

Two stars, because the actors were good. But really, too melodramatic for me. I don't think I'll be seeing this again.

Other memorable quotes:

"[Stanley needs] someone to boss her."
"She'll have a husband soon."

"You little minx." (said to Stanley by her uncle)

"You little flirt." (and again, the uncle)

In response to why Stanley's mom (Billie Burke) is so calm about Stanley having run off with her sister's husband: "We've got her on the drugs."

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

2009-12-30T16:29:00.000-08:00

"I wish I had a million dollars... Hot dog!"

"Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight..."

"She lights up like a firefly whenever you're around."

"A toast! A toast! A toast to Mama Dollar and to Papa Dollar, and if you want to keep this old Building and Loan in business, you better have a family real quick."

"George Bailey lassos stork!"
"What're'ya... You mean you're... What is it, a boy or a girl?"
"Mmmm-hmmm!"

"...and are the local yokels making with those David and Goliath jokes..."

"Well, you look about the kind of angel I'd get. Sort of a fallen angel, aren't you? What happened to your wings?"

"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"

"Merry Christmas, movie house! Merry Christmas, Emporium! Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building and Loan!"

"Teacher says, every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings."

"Remember, George: no man is a failure who has friends."

...and of course the original Ernie and Bert. Four stars. Whether I see it next December or not, of course I will see it again.

(Yes, I know the pictures aren't all from the same scene as the quote... It's hard to find exactly what you want out there...)

The Apartment (1960)

2009-12-27T09:29:00.000-08:00

I love Jack Lemmon. He really makes this movie. He plays Bud Baxter, an insurance clerk who lends out his apartment to higher ups in the company so that they have a place to bring their mistresses. Lending out your apartment to philandering executives is hard. You never get to sleep. Even if you have a bad cold, you're stuck outside on the cold stoop waiting for your keys to be returned. The best parts of Bud's days are his conversations with Fran (Shirley MacLaine), the elevator operator at his insurance company with whom he is falling in love. When Bud finally receives the promotion he's been hoping for, he tries to get out of the apartment game, only to be forced back in by the philandering head of the company Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), who cannot be refused. Matters become worse when the different threads of Bud's life start to come together in surprising and sad ways. I wish I could say that hilarity ensues, but I don't think hilarity is the right word...

...from a suicide attempt to Jack Lemmon straining spaghetti with tennis rackets... what is this movie? The box says romantic comedy. There is certainly a lot of comedy. But is it really a romantic comedy? I do not know. I do know I enjoyed it, though. Three stars, and I would see it again.

Hollywood Hotel (1937)

2009-12-03T16:35:00.000-08:00

Directed by Busby Berkley this 1937 musical is long and convoluted but pretty to look at. It stars Dick Powell and sisters Rosemary and Lola Lane with a cameo by gossip columnist Loella Parsons. The song Hurray for Hollywood debuts in this movie. Some songs are repeated. There is a cute scene when the 2 main characters sneak into the Hollywood Bowl after hours.

Pagan Love Song (1950)

2009-11-30T14:28:00.000-08:00

I am now the proud owner of TCM Spotlight: Esther Williams, Volume 2. The Box Set. Thank you Mom and Dad. Prepare for silliness.

My brother Jeremy very reluctantly sat down to drink tea and watch this movie with me when I received the box set...

Mimi (Esther Willimas) is a beautifully tanned, white resident of Tahiti. She longs to leave the island to find a higher calling than living in paradise. She already has a boat ticket away. Hazard Endicott (Howard Keel) arrives on the island of Tahiti (Hawaii) to take hold of a plantation he has inherited. When he first sees Mimi she is in a canoe with her friends. He mistakes her for a native islander and tosses coins for her to catch, while speaking to her in really painfully slow and loud English. Mimi decides to mess with him, adopting an island accent and pretending to be what he thinks she is.
***Jeremy rolls his eyes.***

Endicott hires Mimi's two friends (one of whom is a very young Rita Moreno) to be his housekeepers (although he really wanted to hire Mimi). He is surprised by how small and run down his plantation is, but his new workers tell him it will look great when it is cleaned up. Endicott sings a song about the "house of singing bamboo."
***Jeremy snorts.***

Endicott comes to love his new house and the island. He sings a song involving lines like "How-dee-doo" and "You are well I trust?"
***Jeremy laughs.***

Endicott sings a reprise of his "House of Singing Bamboo" song while holding a pig in his lap.
***Jeremy tries to leave, but is is convinced to stay at least a little longer and finish his tea.***

Endicott finally discovers that Mimi is not really a native, when she invites him to a party at her house. He shows up in island attire, only to feel out of place when he is surrounded by white people in fancy suits and dresses. Endicott and Mimi fall in love, and Mimi's family become hopeful that she will stay on the island to be with him.

Endicott ends up with three island children staying with him, and he sings with them about etiquette.
"Etiquette, etiquette, always fold your serviette..."
***Jeremy raises his eyebrows and says, "Okay Jess, enjoy." He leaves.***

And so on, with some twists and turns, one involving the native workers leaving Endicott's coconut crop outside where it can rot in the rain and him getting very very angry. It was not as much fun to watch once Jeremy left. He didn't even get to see the synchronized swimming. Not the real swimming and not the fantasy swimming.

I feel like I've been typing this a lot lately, but one star. It would be hard to have a good movie with silly, happy islanders, some of whom are probably white people with their faces painted. Oh my. I may someday watch it again, though, because as with my least favorite Cary Grant movies, I do own it.

Kiss and Make Up (1934)

2009-11-29T12:59:00.000-08:00

Oh no no no! Not a good Cary Grant movie!

Cary Grant plays the dashing Dr. Lamar of the famous Dr. Lamar's Temple of Beauty. Having given up his scientific ideals after medical school, Dr. Lamar is a cosmetic surgeon and beauty specialist who promises to help all women achieve "the pink and white complexion that is every woman's birthright." Should I mention that these words are spoken as we watch a black African woman and her two daughters sitting on the floor of their tropical home and rubbing Dr. Lamar's suggested face cream all over their faces?

Of course all of the women in Dr. Lamar's life are desperately in love with him, from patients to secretary Annie, played by Helen Mack. One woman who is in the office to inquire about a procedure for her mother even strips down to her slip when asked before admitting that she is not in fact a patient. Dr. Lamar's beauty ideals and the female "masterpieces" that he has created around him blind him to the beauty of "normal" women such as Annie. Annie can't be bothered to powder her nose, and she is actually capable of getting dressed in 15 minutes, "zippers permitting."

Dr. Lamar's real trouble begins when he falls for a married patient. Mrs. Caron has been visiting him for a very long time, much to the displeasure of Mr. Caron (Edward Everett Horton). Mr. Caron is horrified by the transformation his wife has undergone and threatens, "Doctor, put my wife back the way she was when I married her, or I'll take steps." Mr. Caron does not want his wife back the way she was because of his great love for her, though. He finds her to be too high maintenance now and is also adamant that a beautiful wife will be surrounded by lovers. "Do you realize what the husband of a woman like that is up against?" At first Dr. Lamar resists all of Mrs. Caron's advances (because of course the woman is trying to trap the poor innocent man).
"Are you so professional with all your patients?"
"No."
"Then why am I so...honored?"
But when Mr. Caron finally divorces his wife, Dr. Lamar very quickly marries her, "his masterpiece." For some reason Annie remains enamored with Dr. Lamar through all of this, even when he ditches her in his apartment, where she is taking dictation for his book, to run off to meet his gorgeous former patient Mrs. Caron.

Dr. Lamar and his new wife go off on their honeymoon, bringing Annie along so that she can continue to take dictation for the book. Of course Mr. Caron is also at the honeymoon resort celebrating his new freedom. Who does he fall for? Annie.
Possible best exchange of the movie, after Annie meets Mr. Caron while swimming...
Dr. Lamar: You allow men to pick you up in the water?
Annie: Why not? I weigh less there.

Of course Dr. Lamar realizes that he cannot make it to dinner on time with a wife who needs so much primping time. And of course he is horrified by the tasteless food she eats. And of course he is disgusted when he sees her in her face mask at night. I'm sure you can guess the ending of the movie. But do you know what funny animal is featured in the unnecessary high speed car chase leading to the end? Watch if you want to find out. (Or read the labels at the bottom of this post...)

One star. I may someday end up seeing it again, though, because of the fact that I own it in a box set. A previously unmentioned reason to maybe see this movie is that there are a few songs involved. Less of a draw is the ode to corn beef and cabbage sung by Annie and Mr. Caron. More of a draw is the song that Cary Grant sings twice about "Love Divided by Two."

Thirty Day Princess (1934)

2009-11-28T16:17:00.000-08:00

Oy. One star. My knitting project helped me to survive the movie. I'm not sure I could survive seeing this again, even though I own it.

What to say? A rich business man visiting the tiny country of Taronia befriends the king and learns that the country is much in need of money. He brings Princess Catterina (Sylvia Sydney) back with him to help interest Americans in the plight of Taronia so that they will buy bonds to fund improvements in the country. Sadly, Princess Catterina comes down with the mumps right after arriving. Is the money-raising scheme doomed to end before it has even begun? No! The business man has the brilliant idea to find a look-alike, a "thirty day princess" to play the part until the real princess can get back out of bed. Nancy Lane (also Sylvia Sydney, of course) is discovered in an automat stealing food. It turns out she is an out-of-work actress desperate for any job. Nancy's first job as the princess is to seduce the grumpy newspaper man Porter Madison III (Cary Grant), who has been publishing nasty articles about his theory that the Taronian bonds are a scam. What happens next is too easy...

Here it is, the moment when Porter Madison III falls in love with Nancy Lane (in her princess disguise):
He cannot resist her playful tossing of the expensive crystal wine glasses as she makes toast after toast to her ancestors.

After this, the country is in love with the fake princess, Porter Madison III is in love with the princess... all goes along swimmingly until the real princess's dolt of a fiance shows up. Two more men who have become convinced that the Taronian bonds are a scam discover that there is in fact a missing New Yorker who looks a whole lot like the princess, and who better than the princess's silly fiance to help them uncover what is really going on?

Will Porter Madison III still love the princess when she is no longer the princess? Will Taronia get its much needed money? I bet you know the answers.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

2009-11-27T18:52:00.000-08:00

Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) accepts a case from a beautiful lady, Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), who says that her sister has run away with a dangerous man. She wants the man trailed and her sister back. When Spade's partner tails the man through the city, he is shot and killed. To complicate matters, the man he was trailing is killed just shortly after, and the police are trying to implicate Spade in the murders.

Spade then goes about trying to find out what the lovely Brigid O'Shaughnessy knows about the events that have unfurled and what she was really after when she asked him to tail a man. While wanting Spade's help to reach her true purpose, O'Shaughnessy has no intention of actually telling Spade all that she knows. She can spin a good lie and is used to being able to manipulate the men in her life. She is no match for the brilliantly sardonic Spade, however.

Brigid O'Shaughnessy: Help me.
Sam Spade: You won't need much of anybody's help. You're good. Chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get in your voice when you say things like, "Be generous, Mr. Spade."

As Spade gets deeper and deeper in to the case he comes across a large cast of characters, including a wonderful criminal played by Peter Lorre, all in search of a valuable statue...the Maltese Falcon. I think that one of my favorite scenes may actually have been the scene where Peter Lorre's character shows up to try to search Spade's office.

No more plot, because it's more fun to feel surprised in a movie like this. Four stars, mostly for Humphrey Bogart and his excellent delivery of funny dialogue. Will see again.

Shall We Dance (1937)

2009-11-24T08:42:00.000-08:00

This movie delivered all of the silliness that I have come to expect from a Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire movie but oddly not all of the dancing. One of the "nearly" dance acts involved the two of them walking somewhat rhythmically back and forth on a ship.... But why did they not dance together more often?

"I haven't even met her... But I'd kinda like to marry her."
Petrov (Fred Astaire) is a ballet dancer (he can do anything!) who falls in love at first sight when he sees a flip book of the dancer Linda Keene (Ginger Rogers).

"What? You do not want to dance with the great Petrov? Don't be a silly horse!"
Petrov's first attempt to woo Linda involves pretending to a be a crazy man: dancing about her apartment, speaking in a heavy Russian accent, and telling her that she is not good enough to ever dance with him. It turns out that Linda is sick and tired of silly dancers falling in love with her. She is about to return to America to marry her long-time admirer Jim and get out of the dancing business. Petrov, his manager, and the whole ballet then set sail from Paris to America on the same ship as Linda. Petrov's manager shakes a former member of the ballet who is interested in Petrov by telling her that Petrov has been secretly married for four years. The rumor festers...

"Oh, you've ruined your sweater. I'll have to fix it now."
Petrov finally gets Linda to pay attention to him when he stalks her in the dog walking area of the ship. He starts paying other passengers to let him walk their dogs. Finally one day he has so many dogs with him that Linda's dog excitedly follows him. Soon Linda and Petrov are walking together daily. In fact, they walk so much that Linda's little dog gets tangled in his sweater and has to sit down and watch.

"Do you realize that you're the father of my child?"
A rumor that Petrov and Linda are married reaches the ship. Linda is horrified and thinks that Petrov has started the rumor just to escape another woman. When Petrov's manager is shocked to hear the rumor, Petrov points out that the manager in fact was the one who started it.

"Who's got the last laugh now?"
Linda charters a plane to take her off of the ship. She in her plane and Petrov on the ship eventually make it to New York. When Linda is forced to dance with Petrov in a restaurant where they are both dining separately she realizes just how much fun dancing with him is. Yay! A dance number!

"I'll turn that dream stuff into a nightmare that will make history. Poor Lin."
Linda's manager wants to keep alive the rumors that she is married to Petrov so that she will not marry Jim and leave dancing. He comes up with a brilliant scheme to use a very realistic dummy of Linda that had been designed for some old promotion. He sneaks into Petrov's room at night, drapes the Linda model over him, and takes some new pictures for the press. Luckily, Petrov is such a heavy sleeper that he is not woken up by the flash bulbs.

"You like potatoes and I like potahtoes..."
In order to evade reporters, Petrov and Linda put on dark sunglasses and go rowing and roller skating in Central Park. This leads to song and roller skate dancing. A very good way to prove that you are in fact not a couple.

"Peter, you've got to marry me... If we can get married now, I can start divorce proceedings in the morning."
Again, another brilliant plan. Get married, so you can officially get divorced, thereby proving that you are not in fact married.

"I didn't realize getting married was so depressing."
After Linda puts on an amazing hat and marries Petrov, she begins to realize that she doesn't really want to divorce Petrov the next day. Until the original trouble-making lady appears in Petrov's room.

"All because of you and your practical dummy!"
Everything is a mess! Will Linda go through with the divorce? Will Petrov win her back with his crazy scheme to dance with dozens of women all wearing incredibly creepy Linda Keene masks? What will happen?

"If he couldn't dance with you, he'd dance with images of you!"
Awwww. And so on... I guess just two stars, as sad as that sounds, and I probably won't see this again. The Gay Divorcee is definitely my favorite so far.

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

2009-11-22T08:10:00.000-08:00

So, here is my very naive question: Is there a movie in which Marilyn Monroe does not play a ditz? Yes, yes, I'm supposed to know things like this. I just haven't seen very many of her movies. Only Some Like It Hot and Bus Stop (Amy, do you remember Bus Stop?). Oh, and that little moment of a part in All About Eve. This time, Marilyn plays a ditz with glasses who has to take her glasses off any time there is a chance of being seen by men. "You know what they say about girls who wear glasses." Sadly, this causes her to bump into things frequently and get even more confused than she is with the glasses on.

Three models, Schatze (Lauren Bacall), Pola (Monroe), and Loco (Betty Grable) move into a luxury condo in order to meet and catch millionaires to marry. Unfortunately for them, the rent is much too steep and they are forced to keep pawning their rented furniture. Schatze, having been married and cheated before, is adamant that the girls not waste any time on men without a fortune. Men like the ones Loco keeps bringing home.

One of Loco's unacceptable finds, Tom Brookman, falls for Schatze, but she only has eyes for the rich Texan widower J.D. Hanley (William Powell). Little does Schatze know that Brookman is in fact a millionaire. But while Brookman goes to great lengths to court Schatze (even booking the three girls to model clothes for him in a store!), he is careful not to let Schatze know about his wealth lest she pick him based on that. While Schatze chases after Hanley, who is afraid that she would be wasting her life to marry an old man, her friends go off and find the loves of their lives: men with no money! I will not give away the hilarious circumstances under which they find their loves. Her friends' happiness eventually causes Schatze to re-think her obsession with rich men, with terrible timing for the poor Mr. Hanley.

Three stars, and I would definitely see this again. Now, if I only I could write a new ending for William Powell's character.

Nancy Drew: Detective / Nancy Drew: Reporter (1938)

2009-11-01T09:13:00.000-08:00

Gee, Gosh, was Nancy Drew really this ditzy? Not in the books. In fact, my friend Yvonne, who remembers the books quite well, was especially upset while watching Bonita Granville's pouty, ditzy performance.

In Nancy Drew: Detective, Nancy tries to find a missing rich lady who has disappeared right before donating a large sum of money to Nancy's prep school for girls. The search involves following a carrier pigeon by car, taking aerial photographs to find the kidnappers' house, and watching her friend turn an old x-ray machine into a radio transmitter to call for help. In Nancy Drew: Reporter, Nancy is disappointed in her assignment for a contest at the local paper and steals a real reporter's assignment. She finds herself trying to investigate a murder in order to clear the name of a framed woman. Nancy solves all of these crimes with the help of her reluctant "friend" Ted Nickerson (why the movie people changed his name from Ned is beyond me). She bosses him around, gets him in trouble, makes him dress up as a lady... he whines a lot and stumbles clumsily over things.

The world according to Nancy Drew:
"I think every intelligent woman should have a career."
"That conceited tweet-tweet!"
"Quit disturbing the molecules!"
"You hooligans!"
"I guess it's just my woman's intuition. Every woman has one, you know."
"Well statistics prove from ages 15-20 a woman is mentally 5 years older than a man of the same age."
"Guess my woman's intuition didn't function this time."

But, however ditzy she appeared to be in these movies, Nancy did get the job done. Two stars, and I really don't feel like checking out the rest of the series. My curiosity has been satisfied.

Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

2009-10-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

Singing star (a la Elvis) Conrad Birdie is going to be drafted! Oh no! But that is not what the teenagers below are discussing in their wonderful "dancing while talking on the phone and clogging up all of the town's phone lines" number... No, just as worthy of hours of phone calls is the fact that Hugo and Kim (Ann-Margret) just got pinned!

"Did he pin the pin on? Or was he too shy?"

Adding more drama to the mix, struggling songwriter Albert (Dick Van Dyke)'s his soon-to-be-fiance Rosie (Janet Leigh) comes up with a brilliant and manipulative scheme to help Albert sell a song. Before Conrad ships off to the army, he will appear on the Ed Sullivan show to sing one last song, "One Last Kiss," and to kiss one last girl goodbye. And which lucky fan club member gets picked to receive the kiss? Kim, of course. Will Hugo like it? Will they remain pinned? Will Conrad and his hip-swinging, faint-inducing antics tear the town apart?

One of my favorite scenes is one in which Conrad sings at the town hall in Kim's town and causes almost everyone in the town to faint by the end of the song. While I don't have a picture of that scence, I do have a picture of my favorite outfit of Kim's. She wore this for a dance number that we may just need to do at my wedding. Or am I being sarcastic?

Four stars for joy inducing songs, animals and people being drugged with speed, crazy outfits, Dick Van Dyke dancing, and a movie that knows it is being over the top. The purpose behind this viewing was that David was Harvey Johnson ("Can I speak to Debra Sue...") in a high school production, and I was hoping to get him to sing along. I will of course see it again and again and again.

The Wedding Present (1936)

2009-10-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

So, Richard Wallace creates a film in which Cary Grant and Joan Bennett are witty newspaper reporters in love who just can't seem to end up together. Then four years later Howard Hawks makes a film in which Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are two witty, divorced-from-each-other newspaper reporters who just can't seem to end up back together. Hmmm. Very popular theme of the time?

In this one, Charlie (Cary Grant) and Rusty (Joan Bennett) work on the paper together and are "almost married." After a botched attempt to get a marriage license, Rusty declares that it was silly of them to try, and they should just stay in their happy "almost married" state. Not even a night spent carousing with a silly archduke, about whom they want to write a story, can convince Rusty that really they should just break down and try to get married again. Not even when the archduke tells them, "Oh, but [marriage] is a divine madness."

So on they go with their lives as flirting reporters until Rusty is granted a month's vacation. While she is in New York trying to make Charlie jealous, Charlie gets a surprise promotion to editor. Rusty returns to find him no longer his old fun-loving self. She thinks up a giant prank to help him get his sense of humor back, but ends up getting herself fired.

Rusty meets a new man on her way to New York to find a new job and soon finds herself engaged. What will Charlie do? Why, travel to New York to give her the best wedding present ever (involving fire trucks, ambulances, police sirens...).

No, the wedding movies are not my new theme (did you notice I watched Night of the Living Dead?), but maybe I can gleam some tips from all of these wedding-related movies... In any case, I would see this again (and probably will since David got me a box set that contains it). Probably just two stars from me, though: Fun and silly, but also dopey and silly if I'm thinking seriously about it, and it's definitely not as brilliant as its witty newspaper movie rival.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

2009-10-12T14:30:00.000-07:00

Classic horror...this fits here, right?

The music is horror movie music...
There are zombies...
There is a little girl zombie who eats her mother, blood dripping from her mouth...
There is a sad ending that may in fact be a social commentary...
and I was a little bored. In fact, had I not been simultaneously putting photos in my photo album, I might not have been able to watch the whole movie. It is definitely a movie to watch with someone, so you can say things like:
"I bet he'll slap the silly hysterical woman."
or "Did he really just say, 'Don't you know what's going on out there...this is no Sunday school picnic'?"
or "Are zombies really so scary when they move so slowly?"
or "Why bother to make the silly hysterical woman afraid of matches if they're not foreshadowing her turning into a zombie?"
or "Zombies, just get on with it! Storm the house already!"

Lesson learned: Without the Bennett sisters, the world is lost in the face of the living dead.

Father of the Bride (1950)

2009-10-06T13:57:00.001-07:00

Poor Stanley (Spencer Tracy) has to deal not only with the fact that his daughter is getting married...and he doesn't even know the financial stability or sense of the groom... but also with the fact that the wedding is going to be a humongous, expensive affair.

The conflicts the characters had were just so silly. The wedding was almost called off when the groom had an idea that the bride didn't like for a honeymoon destination. Also, if the family couldn't afford it and the bride, Kay (Elizabeth Taylor), really wanted a small wedding as she claimed, why did the family pay movers to have all of the furniture removed from their home so that they could host almost 500 people at the reception? And why was Kay wearing this dress?

Weddings don't always have to make people crazy, right?
Two stars. I'm not sorry I watched it, but I probably won't watch it again.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

2009-10-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

David chose this movie for us to watch one night...I waited too long to blog it...
Jessica: Why did you choose this movie?
David: You wanted something you'd never seen before. And you wanted a classic movie.
J: What do you like about it?
D: I don't know. I guess I have good memories of it. I probably watched it for the first time when I was eleven or so. We'd go to Hastings... that was when I started to really like Hitchcock... I like the suspense.
J: What should people know about the plot?
D: Well, I don't want to give it away...
J: A little sound-bite.
D: I don't want to give it away... Family man Jimmy Stewart finds himself in the middle of intrigue along with his lovely wife Doris Day. It would give stuff away if I said anything else. Except I'll say this. There's a scene that can only be explained by the fact that Hitchcock wanted to have a scene in a taxidermist's.
J: Thanks.
D: No, thank you. This interview has been lovely.

Four stars, and I would watch it again. I also want to re-watch Hitchcock's 1934 version, because I saw it too long ago to remember just exactly how different it was...I assume no "Que sera sera..."

Paper Moon (1973)

2009-08-16T20:55:00.000-07:00

We watched this at the Hollywood Forever Cemetary on Saturday. The surprise guest was Tatum O'Neal. I was really very cool of her to come out, and we mean her no disrespect, but we have to remain honest as reviewers, even though we know Tatum may read this...

Don't look so shocked, Tatum!

Me: What do you want to say about Paper Moon?
Jess: Oh my gosh. Well...
Me: Was it as boring as I made you think it was?
Jess: No it wasn't as boring, I did wonder how long it was going to be sometimes, but it wasn't as boring. I guess there was a lot more comedy than I was imagining.
Me: What did you think of Tatum O'Neal?
Jess: She was good at glowering. The real Tatum O'Neal was there.
Me: Did that add to your experience?
Jess: No.
David: Except that when we were clapping at the end, you felt that there was really someone there to clap for.
Jess: Yeah, I had probably forgotten about her by then. The problem is, I don't really know who she is.
Me: Did it pull at your heartstrings?
Jess: Excuse me? No, was it supposed to? It didn't really pull at my heartstrings because it all seemed so over the top. I wasn't really concerned about the little motherless girl.
Me: What about you, David?
D: I'm not really part of the blog.
J: You can comment. Did it pull at your heartstrings?
D: No, there was no pulling. I laughed.
J: I definitely laughed, that was the thing, I wasn't really concerned, it was just what silly things will they do next.
Me: Were there any parts that you thought were particularly funny?
J: I thought it was kind of funny when she was sitting up on the hill and the dancer-lady had to go and talk to her and they came to an understanding.
Me: I'm giving it two stars.
J: That's fine with me, I thought it was funny but I didn't love it.

Two stars, will not watch again.
Sorry, Tatum.

Awww, don't look so sad! You've still got the Oscar.
*******************************************************************************************************************************
J: For the record, I did not dislike this movie as much as Amy's posting makes it sound that I do. I found it really entertaining and funny. I was tired, and didn't know that my responses to the questions that were being fired at me were being typed up into a posting. That being said, I would see this movie again.

Please Believe Me (1950)

2009-08-16T19:42:00.000-07:00

Deborah Kerr, Deborah Kerr, why are you so lovely? And why are you always embarking on steamship journeys when we meet you? Oh, I know - it's because that's where you meet the charming, debonair men who break your heart!

So you're on a cruise ship, bound for America where you will collect your inheritance of a Texas ranch which, unbeknownst to you, is completely worthless.

Having heard reports of her new-found wealth, three lovesick men find her loveliness irresistible in this movie: a gambler who needs to pay off his debts to a scary gangster, a wealthy playboy who could care less about her wealth, and the lawyer of the playboy, who makes love to her in the most awkward, over-blown, over-planned, clinical way imaginable.

Fortunately, Kerr's Character, Alison Kirby, is clever enough to decipher American slang, see through some of the most obvious angles her suitors are playing, and survive the somewhat confusing plot unscathed.

She's charming, her costumes are charming, and she's one of the most intelligent heroines I've seen in a classic movie. I mean plenty of women are witty in old movies - but how many are the authors of their own plot twists?

For that reason if for no other, three stars. I could give this four if the leading man had been a little bit charming, but he was a dork. Endearing, but I do love a dashing hero for my sassy heroine!

Probably won't watch again.

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

2009-08-13T23:52:00.000-07:00

Tivo's description of this movie says "Action Adventure (1952) Betty Hutton, Charlton Heston, Cornel Wilde, Dorothy Lamour. A high-wire artist, the girlfriend of a circus manager, falls for a French aerialist." How it failed to mention Jimmy Stewart as a bad clown named Buttons who just happens to have learned enough about medicine in the Navy to save the circus manager's life at a key moment in the film is beyond me!
Let me repeat this slowly:
Jimmy Stewart.
In clown costume for the entire movie.
Playing Buttons the bad clown.
Who is secretly a surgeon.

There you have it, the reason to watch the movie, right there, nothing more required...but there is quite a lot more that is offered.

Oh what else? It's a musical. It's a big schmaltzy expensive costume musical with live animals and costumes that would shame Las Vegas showgirls. And this is what TCM describes as "Action Adventure"? (I happen to know that the program information on Tivo is usually supplied by the network....)

Okay, okay, all the music is diegetic, they sing as part of the circus, sing to cheer themselves up or to advertise the show - no-one sings a story or a monologue or a line that could have been spoken - but still - a coordinated number with dancing girls swinging from pineapple-bedecked ropes is quite, quite good.

By the way, that number would be, according to the ringmaster: 'The luscious Phyllis dances and sings to the sultry strains of Lovely Luawana Lady!" (Dorothy Lamour plays Phyllis)

Because Hawaii was only recently made a state we had to humiliate it, right? Like some kind of national hazing ritual?

On the more modern tip, the lyric "they don't pack that wicky whack" could easily be sampled for a hip-hop track - Diddy is probably all over it already.

WHAT is not to love about a circus movie? It allows people to say lines like
"You've got sawdust in your veins" and
"The only thing about you I'm interested in is your elephants" and
"When I kiss you, I need to have my feet planted firmly on the ground"
and while we're quoting favorite lines:
"I've never run from a fight" "and I've never lost one"
"What does a girl have to say to make a blind man see"
"Be careful of that halo, sister, it's phony, it'll slip and you'll be wearing it around your neck"
"Don't believe everything you hear, it's only half of what you see."
"Is that a professional opinion?" "That's a clown's opinion!"

The plot is thick - there's a rival circus named the Columbia, a crooked carnival games mobster, a jealous showgirl rival of the "high=wire artist" (who also does trapeze, by the way, so I'm not sure why she's a "high-wire artist" in the description). There is a german elephant-trainer who is in love with the showgirl rival, there is the crazy french aerialist who is completely obnoxious and deserves to fall and break his stupid arm.

Then of course there is a clown with a dark secret and a cute little dog (possibly named Squeaker?).

The aerialist tries a trick without a net to show off for the high-wire artist and ends up falling. The high-wire artist falls in love with his derring-do and leaves the poor hard-working sullen Charlton Heston - I've never liked him in anything but the aerialist is so arrogant and obnoxious it really makes it easy to love him. After this the movie goes on for another hour - the plot twists and twists again - the rival goes for the dumped circus manager, the high-wire artists chases the aerialist, a detective comes looking for the clown - and on and on...ending with a train crash in which a leopard escapes making me decide that this movie is the other side of the "Bringing Up Baby" story - remember the escaped leopard? It's dangerous? It escapes from a train that is crashed? This could be that leopard! I choose to see it that way.

They must have shot a lot of the crowd scenes in a hangar on the lot because the crowd has some stars in it (I spotted Bob Hope at one point) and I'm sure some executives if I knew who to look for. They must've hired some circus people to do the acts and filmed those, but they also used a LOT of green screen. A LOT. It's pretty entertaining to speculate on why - I mean the effects shots are obvious - but in one scene there are just a bunch of people packing stuff up in the background - they couldn't shoot that? Or they just forgot and had to pick it up as an insert shot?

Once in a great while a movie comes along that is so bad it becomes good again - one might even call it a Great Bad Movie. This is might just be the Greatest Bad Movie on Earth...maybe.
Three stars, would positively watch again. Probably going to do so right now.

Some Like It Hot (1959)

2009-07-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

I love this movie. I tried to watch it outside at the Boston Harbor Hotel last summer, and a thunderstorm half an hour into the movie foiled my attempt. Now a year later, I have finally seen it again. Four stars... plan to see it many more times. Why do I love it? Because it is fifty years old, and yet the comedy is still hilarious... Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis are perfect... It is immensely quotable... It's just so funny.

Joe (Curtis) and Jerry (Lemmon) have to flee town when they accidentally witness a mob mass killing. Best way to skip town? Dress up like women, of course, and join a women's band on its way to Florida.

Hilarity ensues as both men take turns falling for their band mate Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), who confides to Joe's alter ego Josephine that she is hoping to meet a dashing millionaire in Florida. Even more hilarity as a millionaire man falls for Jerry's alter ego Daphne.

And the wonderful ending. If for some reason you have never seen the ending or had it quoted to you and you just love surprises, don't watch.

The Gay Divorcee (1934)

2009-06-20T14:39:00.000-07:00

Ohh, wonderful wonderful silly movie.
Guy meets girl...

Mimi (Rogers) gets the end of her dress stuck in her aunt's trunk as her aunt locks it. Guy (Astaire) comes by and saves her by quite shockingly ripping her dress. He is smitten. She runs away. He spends weeks in London standing on the sidewalks and starting at every woman's face to find her until he finally rear-ends her car by accident.

Girl runs from guy...

Every silly dance movie needs a high speed car chase.

Guy pursues girl...

Lucky thing that Guy thought to buy a "Road Closed" sign at a sporting goods store. What a good way to bring a high speed car chase with one's beloved to a halt.

Girl starts to fall in love...

After losing Mimi again, Guy happens to find her at an ocean resort. She is there to try to secure a divorce from the geologist husband she hasn't seen for years. He is there with his lawyer friend who is helping Mimi to secure the divorce. But of course Guy does not know Mimi is the woman his friend is helping. Guy is charming and sweeps Mimi off her feet.

Girl becomes convinced guy is a gigolo (rather, a correspondent)...

The plan that Mimi's lawyer has concocted to secure her divorce involves her spending the night with a hired male "correspondent" and then getting caught by some detectives. Guy unknowingly says the code phrase to Mimi that the correspondent is supposed to use to find her, and Mimi is furious that Guy is not really interested in her but is there for a job. One of many many similar jobs.

Everyone dances...

They even twirl up onto chairs and over tables.

Happy ending...

Dancing solves all problems, of course!

I hope I get to see this again. It's now my favorite Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire movie. Four stars!

Ocean's Eleven (1960)

2009-06-20T14:38:00.001-07:00

Danny Ocean (Sinatra) gets together with his eleven buddies from World War II to put together a huge Vegas heist. After much work to assemble the crew (really a huge portion of the movie), the heist is pulled off. Then hilarity ensues following their discovery by a soon-to-be-stepfather of one of the crew. With three singers, Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr., there are even a few musical numbers thrown in. I'm not feeling like I have a lot to say about this movie. I saw it during my last week of school...I fell asleep and had to re-watch large chunks of it a few days later. So, while I did think it was a good movie, I'm not really feeling inspired to say much.
So...three stars. And I would see this again due to the wonderful ending about which I will say nothing so that it can be a surprise for anyone who has not yet seen it.

Lifeboat (1944)

2009-05-26T18:02:00.000-07:00

This Hitchcock drama begins with a German U-boat bombing an American ship. As the ship goes down in the opening shots, we see a fabulously dressed Connie Porter (Tallulah Bankhead) adrift in a lifeboat, filming everything for an article she wants to write. She is soon joined by other survivors of the blast, including an engineer, a steward, a nurse in training, a woman with a dead baby, and even the captain of the now sunk German U-boat. They drift together for weeks. But despite what you may hope for, and despite the fact that there are so many pros to eating a number of the characters, no one even considers eating anyone else in Lifeboat.

Connie Porter: Apparently the actress is a diva just like her character. Probably wouldn't taste so good, but it might have been good to get her and her complaints about losing her luggage out of the way.

Kovak: So annoying. From the moment he steps on the boat he is arguing and wanting to kill or abandon other survivors. Eat him.

Gus Smith: Not so tasty. Gimpy leg, eventual gangrene. Ick. "What good's a hepcat with one gam missing?"

Mrs. Higley: She sadly jumps off the side of the boat and drowns herself after the death of her baby, is attached to the boat by a rope, and they cut her free. Did no one think to save her for later?

Mrs. Higley's dead baby: Inappropriate to comment.

Alice MacKenzie: Do not eat. She's a nurse. More valuable to have her alive.

Stanley "Sparks" Garrett: Could never have been eaten. The actor, Hume Cronyn went on to star in Cocoon and Batteries Not Included. Too important to eat.

Joe: Token wise black character. Plays a mean flute and prays...too valuable to eat.

Rittenhouse: Too sinewy. Probably not a good first choice of a meal.

Willy (the German captain): Oh, definitely to be eaten. He was trying to bring the boat to a German supply ship from which they would all surely have been sent to a concentration camp. And he had secret supplies he did not share.

But as I said, no one gets eaten. For tales of cannibalism, skip Lifeboat and take a Criminal Law class in law school.

The 39 Steps (1935)

2009-05-26T16:58:00.001-07:00

Similar to Hitchcock's later movies Saboteur and North by Northwest, The 39 Steps is about a man who is accused of a crime he did not commit and then dragged into intrigue in order to clear his name, saving some people and possibly the world along the way. The major difference: No one scales a national monument. This time the hero is Richard Hannay. During a performance by the amazing "Mr. Memory," Hannay meets a spy who runs to him for protection and then is murdered in his home. Hannay must flee to avoid being arrested for her murder. While on the run, he falls in hate with a lady on a train who gives him away, tries to complete the spy's mission, and then rediscovers and eventually falls in love with the lady from the train. They hate each other so much, you just know they'll end up together.

The first time I watched The 39 Steps I couldn't get past the way that our hero treated his leading lady. He was obnoxious. I finished the movie, declared him to be a jerk, and reported to my dad that it was far from being my favorite Hitchcock. It's a few years later now, and thanks to my dad making me watch this movie again, I can now give it three stars and say that yes, I would see it again.

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

2009-05-14T17:46:00.001-07:00

Depending on my mood when watching this movie, I either laugh a lot or feel vaguely depressed. Ahhh, nuclear humor. David has a friend who says he judges people's intelligence based on whether or not they laugh at this movie. I will definitely see this movie again (hopefully in a good mood if it happens to be with David's friend), and regardless of my mood, I can give the movie four stars.

I give you the highlights:

Peter Sellers:

and Peter Sellers:

and Peter Sellers:

and the finale:
Watch it.

Young at Heart (1954)

2009-04-25T11:18:00.001-07:00

Do not be fooled by Doris Day's cheeriness, nor by her silly songs on the beach. Do not be fooled by the light-heartedness of three sisters playing music in the parlor and laughing about men. This movie is actually dark and tortured. The Tuttle sisters are all so happy in their lovely Connecticut home, playing music with their father, having witty conversations with Aunt Jessie (Ethel Barrymore), and laughing about their men. When a composer named Alex arrives to stay, all is still happy and frivolous. Even the fact that all three sisters fall for Alex does not seem serious. But enter Barney (Frank Sinatra), a troubled pianist, and all goes downhill fast. Lori Tuttle (Doris Day) ditching Alex at the alter to run off with Barney is only the beginning of the horrifying drama. Oh, one star. I was annoyed with this movie and the characters long before it got dark. The star is because Frank Sinatra sings multiple songs. I will not see this again, but I am curious about the 1938 movie Four Daughters, of which this movie was apparently a remake.

From Here to Eternity (1943)

2009-04-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

I think I was supposed to love this movie. I have certainly heard it mentioned a lot. I think the problem is that I just don't tend to enjoy war movies (I Was a Male War Bride notwithstanding). How did I not know that this movie involved the bombing of Pearl Harbor? How did I not know so many sad things would happen? I thought it was a love story...

Is this not the only picture anyone ever shows us from the movie? It is definitely mostly a war movie. So I guess I will not be seeing it again, but I will give it four stars for being cast entirely of brilliant actors and actresses.

My ambivalence toward war movies allowed me to get the following things done:

*Start sweet potato fries.
Wait, is this a war movie? How did I not know this was a war movie? Is that BurtLancaster or Montgomery Clift?

*Organize spice drawer.
Debra Kerr's husband is a real jerk. Who's going to have an affair with Deborah Kerr? Oh, Burt Lancaster. Why does everyone want Montgomery Clift to box so much? Why are they torturing him like that until he agrees to be on the boxing team? What's the big deal?

*Make ingenious cardboard inserts to keep spice drawer in order.
So that famous scene on the beach is only five seconds? Hey! That's Donna Reed!!! Is she a cooch dancer, or just a companion? Oh, Montgomery Clift, does Donna Reed really love you?

*Prepare dinner.

Oh Frank Sinatra. Things just aren't going to end well for you. You can't run off and get drunk during guard duty.

*Eat dinner.
Oh no!!! Oh no!!! Frank Sinatra!!! I didn't know this was going to be a sad movie!!!

*Pack up left-overs to put them in the frig.

Hey, it's the night of Dec. 6th. The Japanese are about to bomb, aren't they. How did I not know this was a Pearl Harbor movie? Oh no!!! Why is Montgomery Clift doing that??? Why is he being so stupid? Now everyone's going to be unhappy. It's one of those movies.

If all of that sounded a little disjointed, it's because that's how my viewing was. Thank you to my roommate Barbara for being so willing to answer all of my, "Wait, wait, what just happened?"s. Maybe I should give the movie another chance.

You Can't Take It With You (1938)

2009-04-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

Fun Fact: My dad was in this play when he was at M.I.T. He played the husband of Jean Arthur's perpetually dancing sister. He got to play the xylophone. James Woods, also a student, played the James Stewart character. Confused? See the movie.

You can definitely tell that this movie is supposed to be a play... A huge ensemble cast of zany relatives and action that takes place almost entirely in one room. It's play-like quality allowed me to quite easily knit most of a hat my brother commissioned.

Things to ponder: Is it okay for a wealthy young son (James Stewart) of a banker to marry the beautiful granddaughter (Jean Arthur) of a very unconventional man who believes in eschewing money so as to do only the things that make one truly happy? Is it still okay if the banker is trying very unsuccessfully to buy said grandfather's house in order to be able to demolish an entire block for a new business compound? And what if the grandfather's house is inhabited by many eccentric relatives and friends who busy themselves with anything from making mechanical toys to launching fireworks out of the basement?

Three stars. May have to see again to ponder my father's acting career. My favorite part of the movie: Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore) as a jovial old grandpa with a harmonica... I wouldn't have recognized him at all if he had not had such a distinctive voice.

The Grass is Greener (1960)

2009-03-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

Oh, Cary Grant. Here he is, Victor, an English lord, living in a castle with his wife Hillary (Deborah Kerr). They have opened up their castle for tours in order to raise some money. When the rich American Charles (Robert Mitchum) wanders into the couple's private rooms, he says many creepy personal things to Hillary, causing her to fall immediately and inexplicably in love with him. An affair begins. Victor, well aware of his wife's feelings, encourages Hillary to go off to London where Charles is. Victor believes the only way for him to get Hillary back is to let her have her fling and then realize where her heart belongs.

The movie is full of infidelity and calm, lordly conversations. When Victor invites Charles to come and stay at the castle after Hillary's week long London trip draws to a close, Hillary and Charles quickly realize that Victor knows all. And that he knows that they know that he knows... Needless to say, hilarity ensues.

Two stars, because who doesn't love a good duel?

And because I own it... I will mostly likely see it again. The goal is to someday own all the Cary Grant movies I can get my hands on, whether I love them or hate them. According to carygrant.net there are at least 72.

Anchors Aweigh (1945)

2009-03-09T14:26:00.000-07:00

So disappointing. Especially when I was so excited to see it... Yet somehow this movie won an Oscar for it's musical score AND was nominated for best picture. Fascinating. I am giving it one star for good singing. I suppose I will probably watch it again, because I own the Gene Kelly/Frank Sinatra box set, but Take Me Out to the Ball Game and On The Town will get many more viewings than this one.

Joe (Gene Kelly) and Clarence (Frank Sinatra) are on a four day leave from the navy. As usual, Kelly plays the womanizer and Sinatra plays his naive but adorable follower. Joe is trying to meet up with a mysterious Lola to make the most of his four days on shore, but is foiled first by Clarence following him to try to learn how to get a girl and second by a little boy (Donald Martin) who has run away from home to join the navy. Joe and Clarence are roped into bringing the boy home, where they meet Aunt Susan... the love interest.

Clarence asks for Joe's help to woo Aunt Susan, but of course another woman falls for Clarence, and Joe falls for Aunt Susan. I feel I can write that without giving anything away. This is a very predictable movie. Along with all the wooing, Joe and Clarence have promised Susan a singing audition they can't actually get for her, and the little boy becomes completely attached to Joe. Despite the fact that this movie won an Oscar for its score, I can't seem to remember any of the songs. There is a conductor, Jose Iturbe, who makes an appearance as himself in the movie... so I remember there was some good music...

Fun Science Fiction Fact: David was all excited that the little boy is played by Dean Stockwell, Al from Quantum Leap. We spent a little while rewinding trying to recognize his face.

Also please note that this is the second movie I have seen so far this year in which an actor cavorts with Jerry the mouse.
Gene Kelly just had to get a really odd dance sequence into this movie somewhere.

She Done Him Wrong (1933)

2009-03-02T17:07:00.000-08:00

When we first meet Lou (Mae West) she is wearing a hat that looks like a giant Wooly Bear caterpillar. She is crass, she likes to invite men to "come up and see me anytime," and all the men want her. And she gives people the scariest looks.

This movie has it all: a saloon, an omnibus, giant hats, puffy petticoats, a whole lot of crooks, a very young Cary Grant with lots of eye make-up, and hard to understand accents. Lou sings in a saloon. She's having an affair with the owner, but Chick, a dangerous crook in prison, thinks she's waiting for him. Lou seems vaguely interested in every man who crosses her path, but she is becoming especially interested in Captain Cummings (CG), the mission director from next door. He's a different sort of man. Why he has any interest in Lou is more confusing. But he does.

When Chick breaks out of prison we get to worry momentarily about who Chick will knock off for revenge. And we also wonder what has happened to the sweet young woman who tried to kill herself in the saloon because of a failed love affair. Last time we saw her the lady crook Rita was asking her, "Can you sing and dance? Have you ever heard of the Barbary Coast?" And who and where is the Hawk, a new detective in town everyone is worried about? And what do these crooks do? After 49 minutes I still wasn't sure what they were all trying to pull off. Lucky for me, someone else had more of an attention span for this movie and was able to decipher the intricacies of the plot:
http://www.doctormacro1.info/Movie%20Summaries/S/She%20Done%20Him%20Wrong.htm

Anyways, once I understood the plot points I'd missed, I was able to enjoy it when Rita caught her man assistant giving her diamond brooch to Lou and declaring his love...
...leading to more drama.

But do I really believe a Cary Grant character would fall for a Mae West character? Sorry. One star for brave hat wearing and drama. But I don't think I can give more stars to a movie that couldn't hold my attention or belief. Sorry again.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)

2009-02-19T09:53:00.000-08:00

Having loved On the Town, I needed to see more Kelly & Sinatra films. A baseball musical turned out to be a great choice. Not only did it have the same two main characters, but it had a number of the same character actors as well. Oh, joy!

Eddie (Kelly) and Denny (Sinatra) are baseball players and vaudeville performers. At the beginning of the movie we get to see their last act of the vaudeville season before they rush off to Florida for spring training with the Wolves. Once back with the team, they sing the strangest song about their fake exploits while on the road with the vaudeville troop, featuring a verse about a college girl who was so love struck that she stopped studying and...
"Her teachers wouldn't pass her
so she just turned on the gasser
now the sweetest girl at Vasser's
in the cold cold ground."
And oddly enough, because Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelley can sing anything, it sounds nice.

Right after being welcomed back to the team, the men find out that a new owner, K.C. Higgins, will be arriving shortly to take over management of the team. Everyone is angry to the idea of being put under tighter control by a new owner. Of course in a comedic twist of fate, K.C. Higgins turns out to be a Katherine (Esther Williams). I have only ever seen one Esther Williams musical before (and loved it), so I did not recognize Katherine as Williams when she first showed up. It wasn't until the guys watched Katherine swimming in the pool as she sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" that I realized who I was watching.

Katherine plans to clamp down on the players, giving them fines for coming in late and even offering them baseball advice. Eddie can't stand this, and the movie goes on to follow the familiar plot of woo the woman and pretend to love her so that you can get her to do what you want. Denny is assigned the job of wooing Katherine, which he does quite easily by singing a song. Unfortunately for him he goes off to bed, and Eddie rushes off to finish the wooing job, also by singing to Katherine. Denny watches horrified as Eddie appears to be stealing his new girl, not believing his pal Goldberg that Eddie is only wooing in his name. "Then what, I suppose she'll kiss him, and he'll come back and kiss me." I started to get a little worried about how easily Katherine was fooled by Eddie's act. Then Katherine charged Eddie the $50 fine for breaking curfew, and I felt much better.

Then of course much hilarity ensues. Shirley (Betty Garrett) falls for Denny at a game and stalks him mercilessly, Eddie and Katherine appear to fall for each other, all as they dance, sing, play baseball, start fist fights, have clam bakes, lie to each other, get into trouble with gamblers, try to protect each other in all the wrong ways, have a great chase scene around the bases, and dance and sing some more.

Next time I go to a game, forget the Red Sox hat... it is finally time to break out my grandmother's old hats.

This picture does no justice to the technicolor pink in the movie. And this is just one of the many wonderful hats that Katherine and Shirley wear throughout the movie.
Four stars! Four stars! Yes, it's silly and sexist, but four stars! Must see again!

The Crimson Pirate (1952)

2009-02-09T14:18:00.000-08:00

Can you:

1) Play "I have scurvy" so successfully that your unsuspecting target will board your ship, allowing you to then jump up and take prisoners?

2)Take flying leaps through the air and bounce off of building awnings to escape a pursuing army?

3) Wear a tight fitting ladies sweater and ballet shoes and still look like a swashbuckler?

4) Accomplish the impossible with the help of your mute but acrobatic sidekick who communicates solely through charades?

5) Seduce damsels in distress? ("If you knew it was bolted you must have tried it, and if you tried it, you must know why it was bolted.")

6) Plan to swindle everyone for your own pirate purposes but become a noble swashbuckler instead?

Yes? Then you may be one of these men:
The Crimson Pirate. A must see. Three stars.

Carefree (1938)

2009-01-31T10:16:00.000-08:00

Watch this movie for the dancing. No matter the plot (which in this case is obnoxious but full of hilarity), Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire are worth watching. Fred Astaire can dance anywhere and while doing anything...

In Carefree Stephen (Ralph Bellamy) is dumped by his fiance Amanda (Ginger Rogers) and enlists the help of his good psychiatrist friend Tony (Fred Astaire) to convince her that she really does want to get married. Amanda dislikes Tony almost immediately after hearing his tape recorded diagnosis that she is a silly thoughtless female. While she eventually does agree to meet with him for analysis and help, she first spends some hilarious scenes insulting him while wearing great hats.

The fact that there is hypnosis involved in Amanda's treatments should be enough to draw even the non-dance lover to this movie.

Needless to say, much hilarity ensues, and Stephen does not necessarily get the help that he is looking for. Oh Ralph Bellamy. Were you limited to a career in which you play the dopey guy who is left for a suave hero? I have seen only three of your movies, so I just don't know. But Irene Dunne preferred Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell preferred Cary Grant, and now Ginger Rogers prefers Fred Astaire. To be fair, The Dunne and Russell characters had both been previously married to their Grant character co-stars, and you were a transition back to their marriages. But Ginger Roger's Amanda treated you so poorly. Wait... I have just learned (imdb.com) that Ralph Bellamy won a Tony for his 1958 portrayal of FDR. I feel a little better.

Two stars for golf dancing and hypnosis by dancing. I'm sure I will find other Rogers & Astaire movies to entertain me in the future. And now for more dancing...