Change Your Image
NeverLift
Reviews
Mad Hot Ballroom (2005)
A superb film
I've lost count of how many times I've seen this film -- at least once with each new friend. It is a celebration of beauty, childhood, and transition -- and, oh, yes, dance. I wish at my adult age I could dance with the grace and involvement of these children. The film maker follows them outside the studio, to show us their hopes and dreams. It is astoundingly rendered, particularly for this physically inept klutz reviewer that finally found his dance as he approached 50, and now agonizes: Where were these teachers when I needed them?
If you have felt the music but never felt comfortable showing that feeling in public, believing you were too clumsy to exhibit your appreciation: See this movie. Glory in it. Then take a few lessons. It's there, go for it.
Our Town (1977)
Personal contact
I was lucky enough to see this in its first broadcast, and have never forgotten it, especially Act III. I agree in retrospect with the criticism of Hal Holbrook being too "folksy", only because I am currently involved in a stage production in which the Stage Manager's narration is more detached -- not cold, but not as personally involved.
There are many plays that will move me to tears, or to anger, but the emotional response is usually FOR the characters portrayed. That is, it is a detached response, with little or no sense of personal participation in the milieu that is creating the response. In "Our Town", the paucity of set decoration and the inclusion of us, the audience, in the action through our being addressed directly by the Stage Manager, makes this a personal experience.
In the presentation of which I'm a part just now, I'm merely an extra -- one of the dead in Act III without lines, Farmer McCarthy. I found there is just one difficult aspect of that role: Enforcing on myself the rule that dead people don't cry. Takes discipline.
The Savage Innocents (1960)
A visually stunning study of another culture
I saw this movie in its original release, ca. 1960, while living in Canada. We didn't see it so much a drama as an exposition of Eskimo (now Inuit) culture, behavior, and mores that used the story line as a vehicle to help in that process. And, of course, it is visually stunning.
A story I heard at that time claimed the reason the secondary roles are not played by Eskimos was that they didn't have the concept of lying in their culture, and acting -- pretending to be another person, as opposed to taking on the role of, say, a seal in a story-telling activity at a communal gathering -- requires that one, essentially, lie. That is, the claim was that the casting staff could not find an Eskimo that could act.
There are episodes in the portrayal that seem over-acted, but that opinion may be a result of my not having personal experience with how Eskimos would actually behave in the activity being portrayed in those scenes. But the scene of death and survival after the sled breaks through the ice is, to coin a phrase, chilling. Asked for help to save the soaked Mountie, Quinn, in the lead Eskimo role, responds, "That man is dead." And then you watch the Mountie freeze to death in under two minutes. Very powerful.
Highly recommended.
Red Skies of Montana (1952)
Based upon an actual event
This film is very loosely based upon an actual event known among smokejumpers -- and the entire state of Montana -- as the Mann Gulch tragedy, in which 12 out of 15 smokejumpers were burned to death. Norman Maclean, author of "A River Runs Through It" and a resident of Missoula, Montana, home to the first smokejumpers and now the principal school for them, spent the last 13 years of his life research the event, in incredible detail, and writing an utterly fascinating book, "Young Men and Fire", which I heartily recommend.
Obviously, since the book was not published until after Maclean's death in 1990, it was not the basis for the movie, but the event was.
I first saw it in a fund-raising presentation in the Wilma, an old Art Deco theater in Missoula, coincidently sitting beside a student from the Smokejumper Center. His attention was rapt. The funds, BTW, were used to recover and restore the actual DC-3 that carried the Mann Gulch smokejumpers.
There is an account of the presentations made at the 2004 National Smokejumpers Association reunion by the spotter (gives the "go" signal, on board the aircraft), the dispatcher, and one of the survivors from the Mann Gulch tragedy, found on the University of Montana Web site, at www2.umt.edu/comm/f04/airplanes.shtml. It's short but intense, and will give you an appreciation of what happened. Then the book . . .
In electing to give this a 9, I've taken into account the technology available and the style of movie making and acting of the times. I would say the acting would rank significantly lower by today's standards. But it is well worth watching.
Staircase (1969)
It is a joy to watch!
I don't know what movie the other reviewers were watching, or why they are so bitter. I agree completely with the contemporaneous reviews, which praised the movie highly. Two fine actors spend the entire movie, out of their normal characters, showing off to each other and producing a gem as a result. The contrast between Burton's prissy old woman and Harrison's aging swish -- that so embarrassed the Burton character -- was wonderfully portrayed. Yet they managed to demonstrate that querulous yet enduring relationship that often results between an aging couple that experience each other's foibles, constantly express annoyance at them, and yet have too much basic affection to part. This is a marvelous movie, and I regret that I can't find it on video to share with others.
Maybe it's that I'm not gay that allows me to appreciate the fine craft it exhibits, since it doesn't threaten me personally.