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Auntie Mame (1958)
Great movie, but to what audience?
Like many, in fact most of the people here, I absolutely adore this extremely funny and heart-warming movie and could watch it repeatedly. The performances, the theatrical sets and cinematographic techniques, the episodic nature, the historical sets and costuming, and above all the script were all phenomenal.
But being a strong damned lib'rul myself, I wonder; can a sincere right wing conservative really enjoy this movie? While it makes no overt political statements, it seems to ooze liberal values from every pore, and if the hideous trustees, fiancée and in-laws wouldn't have been right wing, Christian Republicans at least today (if not in the period of this film), I'd eat the movie reel by reel. It's movies like this that make me think that the conservatives, at one time at least, had some justification for believing that Hollywood was a bastion of liberals. Of course, that kind of movie is much less common or overt today.
Yes, Auntie Mame was a snob herself. But it wasn't snobbery based on birth, money, or religion. It was based on what you were and what you had to offer in the way of being interesting - not who you were, who you were connected to, or how much money you had. She was extremely generous when she was wealthy, but she was also extremely generous when she was poor. Admittedly, she wasn't competent to do a damned thing productively herself, but she was clearly highly intelligent, cultured, well-read and well-informed, so I don't believe she was a total waste of the resources she was consuming by living.
It was just something I was sort of musing about...
The Terminator (1984)
Cameron does effects and action to sell his stories
So many people write James Cameron off as a writer/director who specializes in action and special effects. While it's true that almost no one does either better, I have always believed that Cameron uses these tools in order to get people to see his stories - not the other way around as some here seem to think. Cameron is a sci-fi buff and a true romantic in the original sense (i.e. romance not necessarily as sexual love, but adventure and belief in greater possibilities than mundane life often suggests).
I remember being made to watch this movie in 1986 by my then boyfriend, having assumed from its star (Schwarzenegger) and its title that it was simply mindless, stupid violence. The first few minutes, showing the war in the future, made me realize that I'd been completely wrong - as a fan of science fiction books, I realized I was seeing the real thing as only Kubrick, Lucas, and Spielberg had done it thus far. I became a Cameron fan then and there; all the elements he has shown since were demonstrated: a compelling story that always centers on a real love (whether it be between a couple, or a child and parents), a sharp sense of humor coupled with a slight sadness or wistful element, flawless art direction and as good effects as can be got for the money and time it was made, highly believable performances, and an utter relentlessness that, each time you think it's finally over, turns out not to be.
I see time and time again the criticism that the movie is dated in its styles of clothing, music, and cars. This puzzles me. You don't watch a movie of the thirties or forties and think how dated it is; it was made when it was made and reflects that time. I can only figure that a lot of folks remember themselves in the eighties and somehow now are embarrassed that they followed the fashions of the times and not those now current twenty years later. This is silly; how could you or a movie of the eighties have incorporated the customs or tastes of a later time? The movie was made in 1984 and has its characters dressed, listening to music, and driving cars accordingly - get over it! Probably one of the primary reasons this criticism comes up is that the movie has held up so well in other ways. Hundreds of sci-fi movies have been made since, and yet, except for the weakness of some of the stop-action effects of the endo-skeleton Terminator, this movie can pretty much hold its own with any of them. In fact, I suspect that had not Cameron done The Terminator and, shortly thereafter, Aliens, sci-fi movies would not be what they are today. This movie ranks with Star Wars in raising the bar as to what constitutes good sci-fi in movies and few, if any, since have quite equalled them.
If you have somehow managed to miss this movie, and enjoy a story with crisp dialog, good performances, incredible suspense, and a truly moving love story, I suggest you get your hands on a copy ASAP. I doubt you'll regret it.
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Apparently rather misunderstood, delightful romantic comedy
If you've read the other user comments, you know that Tracey (Hepburn) is a rich society girl, beautiful, smart, and dedicated to being perfect. In this case, being perfect includes marrying a successful self-made man, since she is NOT a snob about old money despite her background, and her first marriage, to Dex (Cary Grant), a man of her own class, was in her view so unsuccessful. But the man she has chosen is one who neither knows nor understands her - views her as a trophy to be won and displayed to others, and a goddess to be worshiped in private. He is also stuffy, pompous, self-righteous, and dull - it would appear that Tracey is unconsciously doing penance for her privilege and the failure of her first marriage.
It takes the forced introduction of the poet/tabloid writer Mike (Jimmy Stuart) and his photographer Liz (Ruth Hussey) into the household (Dex, another employee of the tabloid, agrees to introduce them because the editor otherwise threatens to expose the scandals of Tracey's philandering father, and because it somewhat amuses him as well) to force Tracey to come to terms with what she herself is and what she wants and needs in herself and in her mate. Mike, involved at a fairly tepid level with Liz, comes in with an almost visible chip on his shoulder, resenting the old money that, in his view, makes life so easy for people like Tracey and her family, while he toils away writing trash to support his true calling as a poet. He discovers, to his shock, that the Lords are, despite their wealth and some serious eccentricities, real people and that Tracey is not just the product of money and privilege - there's a beautiful and substantial girl there who utterly intrigues him, even if she is a bit spoiled and occasionally arrogant. His sort-of girlfriend Liz watches this with dignity and humor, realizing that there's nothing she can do except wait it out and hope for the best - she loves Mike (and understands him), but she can't compete with Tracey's sheer glamor and she knows it.
On the night before the wedding, Mike and Tracey both get drunk, and alone by the pool they take a swim and talk. Mike ends up confessing his feelings for her, making her realize that the pedestal she sits on for her fiancé is not the place she wants to be - she WANTS to be a flesh and blood woman, not a perfect statue or goddess. She's hammered enough that she is very turned on by Mike's confession and the general romance of the situation, and perfectly willing to be swept off her feet and into his bed, but Mike, although drunk and thoroughly infatuated, is a gent and simply carries her to her own bed to sleep it off. Dex observes some of this, and is able to fill in the blanks correctly, fully aware that while he loves her, Tracey is not perfect.
The fiancé is not. He immediately assumes the worst, and that is more than enough for him - he wants his perfect statue, his goddess, and he resents the possibility that Tracey might in fact be human. Tracey, awake the next morning with a hell of a hangover and unsure of the events of the previous night, also fears that she gave in to impulse, yet resents it when her fiancé shows up and reproaches her, especially since by then, she has been assured that she did not in fact "do the deed." Even though she doubted herself, she resents the idea that he immediately assumes the worst and realizes that she doesn't want to be the object of any man's adoration; she wants to be the object of his LOVE. So the fiancé is out of the picture.
But we're still left with a wedding just a few minutes away, and two possible bridegrooms (or none at all). Tracey has a choice - Mike, a man who recognizes her humanity, but in a different way still worships her, or Dex, the man who all along has known her for what she is - flawed and human, yet beautiful, smart, talented, lovable, warm, and giving, and he has also straightened out his own problems with booze. She makes the right choice.
This is a trivially simplistic plot? Not in my book!
Apparently Hepburn wanted Gable and Tracy to play the Grant and Stuart roles. Despite my respect for her intelligence and insight, I think it is fortunate that she wasn't able to get them. Gable was a good actor, but never managed the apparently effortless high-society sophistication of Grant (odd, given that Grant was born and raised lower middle-class Archie Leach, and never went to school beyond the age of 14!), and while Tracy was a brilliant actor, I wonder if he could have managed the innocence and lack of experience that underlay the sarcasm and bitterness in Stuart's character, and that made it so possible for him to become infatuated with Tracey as he did. Tracy's characters always seemed to be rather worldly wise or street smart, while in this role, Mike thinks he's wise, but really isn't. Liz, his girlfriend, is the one who understands the world (and accepts it). She is the female equivalent of Dex here; the observer waiting to pick up the pieces, making sardonic comments along the way.
This movie is cleverly and entertainingly written, and delightfully well acted by all involved. It's hard to imagine anyone finding it dull or beneath them, but apparently some folks can find anything beneath them. Their loss. If you haven't seen this movie, do. If you haven't seen it in a while, watch it again. You won't be sorry. Its mores and assumptions are a bit dated, but the humor, wit, and heart are not.
My Favorite Year (1982)
Delightful!
The supporting cast of this movie is almost flawless (Mark Lynn-Baker is a little too frantic in some of the more slapstick moments, but VERY good when simply being sarcastically funny or very sincere). With the exception noted above, there isn't a missed beat from a single cast member, and Bologna and Kazan are particularly notable.
But the movie belongs to Peter O'Toole, and, as in The Stunt Man (made a few years earlier), when he's on screen you can barely take your eyes off him. Whether being hysterically funny or terribly sad, he owns the screen from start to finish. From the first shot of him, waking up embracing what he thinks is an unremembered lover from the drunken night before, and staring in bewilderment and near terror as he realizes that it's not a girl at all but a furry THING (a teddy bear), to the last shot of him as he accepts an ovation from the studio audience in probably the only truly serene joy he's had in decades, he is utterly perfect and utterly compelling. Richard Benjamin may have directed well, the script may have been terrific, the supporting performers excellent, but this movie could not have been what it was without O'Toole's presence and brilliance.
It's hard to imagine a more enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half than in watching this movie. There are so many little jokes, so many big jokes, such lovely and REAL touching moments. It is, despite its occasional hilarity, a very gentle and loving movie; there's just no meanness in it, which is a very pleasant and rather unusual thing, especially in a comedy. Well worth watching and re-watching. You'll love it. Your parents and/or grandparents will love it, and you wouldn't be embarrassed to show it to them.
The Lion in Winter (1968)
A Director's Dream Come True
How lucky can you be to get a script like this and a cast like this all in the same movie? I've been shocked at some of the negative comments by other viewers. I was quite young when the movie came out, and didn't realize for years that Peter O'Toole wasn't the fifty year old he was playing, and Hepburn was exactly Eleanor's age at the time, so I fail to see the age mismatched some have mentioned. I'm fifty myself now, and I still find O'Toole perfectly plausible as a fifty year old in this movie. (Although, DAMN, he looked GOOD! What a gorgeous man!)
As for the 'anachronistic dialog,' it was extremely intentional and would have been totally wrong without it. To our ears, the possibly more elegant speech of the period would have sounded unnatural; only by using modern language could these people sound to us as they would have sounded to each other - normal.
The acting is brilliant - it would have been very hard to find any other actor who could share a screen with Hepburn without fading away to nothing, or an actress who could have done the same with O'Toole - only two of such power could stand up to one another. And this was absolutely right for these characters - as best we know, Henry and Eleanor were both that kind of person - brilliant, witty, strong-willed powerhouses. Then the supporting cast: Hopkins, Castle, Terry, and Dalton. Granted, they weren't known at the time, so Harvey, the director, may not have realized right off the bat that he had the cast of a lifetime, but he surely must have realized it fast.
Then there's the script. Like most of Oscar Wilde's plays, you could pick it up, open it to any page, and find at least half a dozen quotable lines. No, people aren't normally that witty in real life, but a) these were VERY bright people as historical fact, and b) it's a play/movie! People don't speak in real life as they do in Oscar Wilde either, but it's enjoyable as hell to watch. Get over it!
Some things I love about the movie are that it's made clear that no matter what Henry tells Alys, Eleanor, or himself for that matter, his real love and true equal is always Eleanor, just as he is hers. Also that, despite the at least a dozen apparent power shifts in the course of the movie, at the end, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has changed. And you can tell that with this bunch, nothing ever will change unless it's due to factors out of their control, like death.
A matter of slight historical correction to other user comments: Alys was legally betrothed to Richard; that's why she'd been raised by Eleanor.
A historical correction to the script is that John, while thoroughly detestable personally, was not at all stupid, sniveling, or whining; his actual character was actually far closer to that of Geoffrey's in the script. Very little is actually known about the historical Geoffrey except that he was actually, if anything, more of a warrior than Richard, and of course, he died quite young, leaving behind two children, the son being the legal heir to Richard, and who died at the age of twelve or so, ostensibly of disease, possibly in reality of John. This wasn't considered that bad a thing, btw, as no one wanted a child as king, and John was the only one of the whole bunch who'd spent most of his life in England itself. The English nobles had seriously resented both Henry's (in his later years especially, as he tried to carve an inheritance for John out of Europe in general, France in particular) and Richard's neglect (Richard had barely set foot in England in his entire life, and was utterly indifferent to it except as a source of revenue). Also, of course, there's no historical evidence for an affair between Henry and Alys EXCEPT that I've read at least one source suggesting that Richard used this as an excuse to not go through with the marriage itself. And there's CERTAINLY no historical suggestion that Richard and Philip had an affair, although it seems highly likely that Richard was gay insofar as he was sexual at all. Bastards of royalty were a dime a dozen in those days, but NONE are attributed to Richard, nor a whiff or rumor of any affairs he ever had. Both Henry and John, on the other hand, would chase anything wearing a dress, and this was considered perfectly normal and even admirable in a "bad boy" sort of way. However, John took it too far, resorting to rape and starvation of wives of political enemies, and this was one of numerous driving forces for the imposition of Magna Carta on him by his rebelling nobles. Ironically, by contemporary standards, at a national level John was a far better king than Richard (Henry at his best was better, but was too often not at his best, being too bent on conquest to bother to rule effectively what he already had). However, John was nonetheless personally a rather nasty man (to put it mildly), once again proving that the best men don't necessarily make the best rulers. His personal character and actions, more than his policies, drove his own nobles into nearly successful rebellion, resulting in Magna Carta, one of the great steps in English history.
Sorry for boring you silly with the history commentary - it's a period I've always found particularly interesting. You can wake up now; I'm finished.
Anyway, great movie in every sense - script, acting, score, cinematography, editing; it just doesn't get better than this.
The Stunt Man (1980)
Great in many ways, but especially the performances
I loved this movie when I saw it in the theater (or rented it in the very early eighties - I honestly can't remember which), but then didn't see it again until quite recently, when I bought the double DVD with the "Sinister Saga Of..." movie and the commentary. I watched the movie at least three times in the first weekend I got it. Obviously, I consider it a terrific film - one of the rare times when I disagree entirely with Ebert.
O'Toole is magnificent, as he was a couple of years later in My Favorite Year. The roles both call for a person who absolutely is Larger Than Life, who dominates the screen every moment he's on it. O'Toole personifies that quality. (I've often thought that's why The Lion in Winter could work - Hepburn was the same kind of woman, especially as she got older, and they were the only two who COULD have stood up to one another on screen, although at that time there were still a few people around who could have managed: Richard Burton comes to mind - when he was on, he was ON).
Some of the comments have stated that they thought Railsback was just muddling through. According to O'Toole's comments, the two of them would spend hours after filming each day was over sitting around talking about the roles and interpretations and acting in general - whether you liked Railsback's performance or not (I did), it had to have been VERY deliberate. That Helter-Skelter had come out before The Stunt Man was a lucky coincidence, since The Stunt Man was filmed first, but it was great in convincing you subconsciously that this guy might be a serious wacko from the start. But there were little throw-aways Rush stuck in that helped you in that way, like a little overheard remark the pretty and slutty hairdresser makes about "that guy who killed all those campers" as she's getting out of the car after dinner. These all combine to make the denouement when Cameron's crime is finally revealed especially exciting (and hysterically funny).
Hershey is remarkable. In one scene, they are filming the film within the film and she is made up and dressed like an old woman at the grave of her long dead lover. You KNOW she is really a young and beautiful actress (not an old woman), you KNOW that this is a fictional script within a fictional script, the scene lasts all of three minutes, and her performance never fails to bring me to tears. Interestingly, what immediately follows the prop-man knocking over a light and her bursting into tears was not scripted at all. Rush, in a rather Eli Cross-like move, told O'Toole to wait until Hershey really got the scene right (that kind of emotional work-up apparently can take several takes to really hit the spot), at which point he (Rush) would signal O'Toole to go out and speak to Hershey. O'Toole, being the experienced actor he was, didn't need the signal; he just walked over to her and hugged her, whispering "You were brilliant" in her ear, at which point HERSHEY, not the character, burst into tears and jumped into a full body hug on O'Toole (legs around the body, I mean). The whisper was later over-voiced by O'Toole for the movie as "Thank you, my baby." which was more appropriate for the director (I'd never really thought about it, but doing that kind of scene well has GOT to really take it out of you!). A brilliant idea on Rush's part, superbly executed by O'Toole. But Hershey, whose character was loosely called by the cast "The Dream Girl" (obviously from Cameron's viewpoint), gave an excellent performance all the way around of a complex woman, neither totally good nor totally bad. She's egotistical, self-centered, a bit spoiled, but not to the point of losing her humanity or general niceness. And she's SO damned beautiful!
I hate movies where you have no idea what's going on, or where there are simply no characters you can stand. I am not an intellectual film buff who infinitely prefers Indies and Foreign films to mainstream American stuff. But I LOVED this movie. You know that you're not sure exactly what's real at any given moment, but that's fine, because eventually you FIND OUT. You're not left at the end of the movie going "huh?" And in the meantime, there's a real, honest-to-God plot happening that you CAN follow, and a lot of humor and wit to enjoy.
This is and I expect will remain on my top ten movie list for life. Part of that is a major love of Peter O'Toole, but most of it is that the movie itself is just plain great, if you don't mind being jerked around when you know you're being jerked around (this seemed to be Ebert's major gripe - once it became obvious early on that the movie was going to be jerking you around, he no longer gave a darn). It was very clever, and I LIKE clever movies.