Change Your Image
brentkincaid
Reviews
The Secret Heart (1946)
A melodrama or a soap opera: take your pick.
I jumped into this movie with both feet because of the stars. I like all of them for different reasons. Walter Pigeon, Claudette Colbert, June Allyson, Lyle Barrymore. Heck, they even have Mrs. Trumble (Lucky and Ricky Ricardo's upstairs neighbor)as the housekeeper on the farm.
What I wasn't ready for was June Allyson as a teenager when she was just on the sunny side of thirty. That certainly did NOT work for me. If she had been Colbert's step SISTER, instead of stepdaughter that would have worked for me just dandy. But, having said that, I want to point out it was the best performance June has turned in so far and I thought I had seen them all. She was wonderful. She did her best while being cast totally against type and age range. And, she pulled it off with aplomb.
The sets, the costumes, the choice of the other characters all worked and so I am sure you will have a nice rainy afternoon if you choose to watch this on AMC or TCM. But, I would NOT suggest buying or renting this movie. It is simply not worth the expense when there are so many much better movies out there.
Back to Gaya (2004)
Terrific
This movie is so cute! It has all the stuff the rest of the CGI animated stuff has except for the humor displayed. But, we must keep in mind this is the first German CGI animated flick ever. So, maybe some of their humor is different from ours in the USA. Still, it makes it to nice, fun level.
I loved all the characters, and the facial characteristics of them were wonderful and a delight to see.
I will admit the rats in the chase sequence would be a bit scary for the wee ones, but I saw Bambi and cried my eyes out at their age. So, I think maybe the kiddies will be tough enough for this.
I give it an 8 out of 10. Keep the kids under about eight from watching it. The rest? You've said worse around your kids by that time. Let them have a romp through Gaya, why not?
Stage Beauty (2004)
Brilliant view of a ignnored page in stage history!
I bought this movie because of Billy Crudup. I always enjoy his performances. But, once the movie started, I was mesmerized. The entire mood and theme of the movie; its looks, its pacing and its story, take us to a time that most of us knew little about.
Theatre people, and theatre students knew about this and tittered over love scenes between two men. But, nobody thought about the moment when all that was over and women took to the stage. I venture to say most of us didn't know it wasn't more than socially incorrect for women to be in theatre at one time, but illegal.
The story is beautifully written and transcends the issue of women versus men on stage and instead focuses on the acting ability of two such people. King Charles II, in the movie, states that the leading lady (Clare Danes) is the first and Crudup is the last (male to play a female, legally...at least in HIS time.) If you want a lovely view of post-Reformation England, theatre in general, you can see it all here. All this movie leaves out is the horrid smells theatre treated you to. It is that real.
Gabriel Over the White House (1933)
Fantasyland, Disgruntled Taxpayer Style
This is a strangely beautiful and at the same time, ugly portrait of Washington, DC as William Randolph Hearst was silly enough to want it to be. This movie is a tone poem and lesson to all those who look to each Presidential election for salvation from some messiah. If anyone thinks a strong hand is needed to fix things, watch this movie.
To be sure, the message of this movie is the opposite of what I have stated here; it means to tell you a strong hand is needed and will be wildly successful. But, what it does NOT show is what happens as a result of the thoroughly fantastic (in the truest sense of the word) "Washington Covenant" the President of the United States forces down the throats of our World War I allies. The audience doesn't see how it won't work; can't work. We don't see the nations of the world lining up against the US and marginalizing us.
But, never mind. After eight years of George Bush doing just that, the movie is a crunchy peanut butter and preserves sandwich of a desert. With marshmallows. There is a particularly prescient moment when the President admonishes and warns the convened leaders of the world (these are countries that owed us war debts and did not pay them, but instead squandered millions on war tools). The President warns about weapons from the air that will kill millions, including children. He warns that new weapons will antiquate old ones
making us think of the atomic bombs used on Japan. And, then he warns of death rays. It was almost funny there for a second.
But, make no mistake. This is not a comedy. It is in deadly earnest, and as the title warns, it is based in Christian concept. Some of the acting is lamentable, but most of it is top drawer and Huston is wonderful as this venal president who reforms due to a power we don't see, but can see working in the miracles performed on the man. I suspect this was a rather successful movie.
I suspect, however, this is probably a major tank of fuel allowing the Anti-American Activities people in Washington to start considering outlawing Hollywood. I understand W.R. Hearst was behind this in a Citizen Kane moment of his strange career and that alone gives this a tantalizing back -story cache. )
The King Maker (2005)
What a waste of everyone's time!
Up to this point, Gentle Rain was the movie I found the worst in history. It has been supplanted by this 'blockbuster' out of Asia. It has one "star" and it is John Rhys Davies. He is way out of shape to be the swashbuckling, magical flying baddie he is cast here. The rest of these people couldn't act their way out of a junior high school play. No clichés were missed in the dialogue, and the special effects were phoned in as often as possible.
It is fairly easy to see that somebody in Asia had some bucks and needed to create a vehicle for some actors they wanted to throw money at. Or maybe it was a director or a writer that needed a credit. My guess is that any career with this movie in it's credential
Do yourself a major favor and don't watch this movie. A hundred Thanksgivings couldn't consume this turkey.
The one funny scene was unintentional. The brother of the King appears on the scene. The king? A handsome, older, short Asian actor. (Bad actor.) The brother? A six foot European. (Also a bad actor.) No excuses were made for this. They just expected us not to notice that this poor man's Jet Li's brother was a wannabe Pierce Brosnan in a cheap dimestore "Injun" wig right out of an old western movie from the forties.
42nd Street (1933)
What a stinker of a movie this is, for all it's 'camp' value.
All the bad things rolled up into a ball, can't stand half as high as the miscasting of the star for this early blockbuster movie. The movie had all these 'hot young stars' in it, and the script calls for various characters to act as if, and even state how pretty and talented Ruby Keeler is as the broke, no experience tyro chorus girl, soon to be star of the hot new show by the hottest producer on Broadway. Think "Andrew Lloyd Weber of the 30s and you get the idea. The fact that the show is crap has nothing to do with anything. Shows within shows seldom are anything but a pretext to hold the story together. Everyone watching this can tell it is THE basis for all those 'a nobody becomes a big star' plots. But, nothing can get you around the terrible acting, comedy, singing and visual talents of the star. Ruby is so outclassed by her costars (Ginger Rogers, to name one) that only the stupid songs distract you from it. Keeler plays this role as if she is on Thorazine. She stumbles through the lines. She has no delivery. She says every line as if she is reading it for the first time and has no idea what is meant to be behind each statement. And, manoman is she a beast to look at. Well, not ugly, exactly, just goofy looking. Those wild eyes, those free-range caterpillars for eyebrows, and that horsey face. Whose idea was it to put her in this production in the first place? My guess? She was sleeping with someone rich, like the star of the 'show within a show', (an actress who should have been given the starring role in this movie; the beastly flick may have been salvaged.)
The John Larroquette Show (1993)
A series for those who were bored with formula sitcoms.
I leave the rating of 'ten' in spite of what privations the series was forced to suffer in its second season. That is because the characters were do wonderful and the writing so wonderfully clever. I set my watch by this show during its woefully short existence. I wanted so badly to see it go on.
The show is set in a bus station in St. Louis; a terrific place for plot twists involving for a recovering alcoholic. (I am one and I howled each week at how dead-on the humor here was.)As Mahalia, the assistant to John, who is forced to take this job, Liz Torres was a past favorite second (or third) banana and stole every scene she was in during this series.
The show took chances and it paid off. It had a young black activist-oriented loudmouth constantly zinging John from the café in the bus station. There was a skinny, rather lesbians female Barney Fife of a cop and her rough and tough closet gay macho man partner. Not least was a hip, happening hooker who John would just not wake up and give a serious tumble to. We all wanted to. What was wrong with the guy? And, last but by no means insignificantly, is David Crosby as John's AA sponsor. He added not only verisimilitude, but the Kind of 'stop whistling past a grave yard' gallows humor AA is famous for.
This tiny, but powerful weekly delight had a constant passing through of some of the finest actors in television and movies gladly peppering this jewel of a show with dynamite cameo performances.
We are all sad when a television show we love bites the dust, no matter when it happens. In this case, I was bitter and still am. Why couldn't they just leave this show alone and let it gain its audience?