Change Your Image
cwdkidman
Reviews
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
Thelma and Louise sing!
This is the first female buddy picture. And these two women are hunting men. Jane Russell is the standout, here. She gives off sexual heat like Deborah Kerr in From Here To Eternity or Naomi Watts in...anything. Ain't there anybody here for love? She asks/sings in a gym full of narcissistic male gymnasts and swimmers, meaning, don't any of you guys wanna...make love? The Hawksian woman can hold her own with any man and here two of them team up to present a united front against the world as they hunt for men. Well, diamonds, in Lorelei's case.
But those diamonds are attached to a man. And Jane Russell is looking for love on any dollar amount but she has standards more to do with honesty and integrity. She doesn't suffer fools.
Why this movie is not yet in the National Film Registry is beyond comprehension. Hollywood had yet to make a female buddy picture depicting non-sisters and with no homoerotic overtones. Jane and Marilyn especially Jane Russell, is simply not able to do anything like that. Russell is too horny for a man.
But no man should think of hurting her best friend. They are like a two-man army in combat, aiding and protecting each other with each longing for a pinup girl when they sleep.
Hawks' films usually have homoerotic overtones but this movie and Scarface are the exceptions. But Scarface is full of incestuous overtones. GPB is Hawks at his most clear. No racy banter, really. Anybody Here For Love? Is straightforward and needs no questions asked about what it means.
And just as in Monkey Business, Hawks has attention on Marilyn's legs and rear end.
Fluff? This? So is A Midsummer Night's Dream.
That Touch of Mink (1962)
The Over-The-Hill Girl
Day was 40 years old when she made this and it shows. Grant was 58 and it doesn't show. For unfathomable reasons, all the men in this movie refer to Day as a young blonde girl and find her irresistible. She was 20 years too old for this and is nearly a co-ed. Day parlayed her G-rated appeal well into her mid-forties.
She comes across as a bad toupee. Or a terrible comb-over.
This movie was a money grab for Grant and a great enttry on her resumee for Day and it shows. Grant is on autopilot and Day is the personification of larceny.
Movies like this are why there was a New Hollywood Movement. It is insulting and sickening in many ways. Plan 9 From Outer Space is called a "bad" movie but that term should be reserved for big budget disasters like this.
Richard Jewell (2019)
Clint Eastwood - actor vs. director
Way back when, no one knew the distance between Clint and Dirty Harry. Unlike Popeye Doyle in the French Connection's portrayer, Gene Hackman, Clint didn't come up through the theater. But now maybe everyone can calm down and see Eastwood for what he is: the stealth Oliver Stone.
Million Dollar Baby
THE UNFORGIVEN
Mystic River
j. Edgar
The Changeling
Richard Jewell
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
GRAN Torino
American SNiper
Flags of our Fathers
Letters From Iwo Jimo
All of these add up to a resume of anti-cops, anti-Fbi, anti-vigilante, anti-racism, anti-violence, movies that Roger Moore would be proud of.
Who knows? He might even try to adapt Absolam! Absolam! Next.
The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)
Age strikes back
44 year old Doris Day plays 24 year old Jennifer Nelson, a kooky young blonde who is described as very attractive. All the guys want her. And she doesn't doubt that for a minute and behaves accordingly. She rebuffs the kindness of her boss, 36 year old Rod Taylor playing 36 year old Bruce Templeton. A lot of attractive genuinely young women work at the research institute where she works but no one notices them. All eyes are on 44 year old middle aged Day.
This . Movie proves that not only male stars hung on to their youth as they began to have grandchildren in real life. Julie Andrews, almost 50, proved that in Victor/Victoria, playing a role best suited for an actress almost thirty. But at least Andrews didn't run your face in her supposed "sexpot role as the sexiest woman wherever she goes" something Day demanded of all her movie roles. Quick, name a . Movie where she played a woman within ten years of her own true age.
But the supporting cast is likeable, and Rod Character doesn't put up with her nonsense after it is established that Taylor, 36, finds Day, 44, desirable as the very attractive kooky young blonde. Who was born in 1922, compared to Taylor's own birth year of 1930.
One gets the feeling Day would wear a wig and impersonate Grace Slick if need be. And never notice the irony. The same was said about Norma Shearer in the 1930s, playing a middle-aged Juliet. This was lampooned,by Tennessee Williams in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, a movie that forced Vivian Leigh to face her own age. Know the actresses who have no problem being true to their age and also their sexual appetites? Helen Mirren and Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman and Liz Hurley. But American actresses never get the memo.
Chinatown (1974)
The waste land of t.s. eliot
Polanski breathes life into a,script so fraught with pomposity that it would embarrass Chandler or Hammett. It would have been cliched if published as a,novel if printed after The Great Gatsby. Droughts, deserts, fisher kings, the name "Noah Cross", dubious fathers, and constant references to Chinatown, (where you can't always tell what's going on).
Into,this sprawling mess of a script comes Roman Polanski and Jack Nicholson and Faye Runaway and John Huston. And they pull,off a,miracle. Like The Allman Brothers Band who turned rock's weariest conceit into Ramblin' Man", Chinatown becomes flesh and blood when turned over to Polanski and his excellent cast. There's no point in going over the plot; if you're reading this you've seen the movie. Either it's top ten of all movies or you can't stand it because of Polanski's personal life. It's either a ten or a one.
But it,IS a ten. No one can deny this movie. Even Polanski himself has a small but pivotal role and brings genuine menace into Jake's life.
THIS is the movie that should have brought Oscars to everyone associated with it. It didn't but the movie is still with us. And it spawned a new,dive into noir and bluesy background music that future erotic thrillers would use it to class up their straight to video films.
Chinatown LIVES and BREATHES. It always will.
Man's Favorite Sport? (1964)
Ironic to the nth
The French called Hawks the first auteur. So did Roger Corman, Friedkin, Bogdanovich, Carpenter, Ridley Scott, Tarantino, and on and on. And the label attached to him the most was "storyteller."
And if it was a good story, he didn't mind repeating it.
So here we have Bringing Up Baby, his Midsummer Night's Dream. And it's such a good story, Bogdanovich told it in What's Up Doc, and Hawks decided the world was primed for the comedic prowess of Paula Prentiss. Was he after her? Don't know Don't Care. He never let rejection get in the way of a good story.
But then something happened. He asked Cary Grant to star. Grant backed off, saying he was too old. Grant had only turned his inventor down.once before: for some bizarre reason, Hawks thought Grant would be perfect in the John Ireland role in Red River! We can all thank God Grant turned down.a supporting part in that movie. What was Hawks, usually the sanest producer/director/writer in Hollywood, smoking?
But Grant had a suggestion..Get Rock Hudson. Hawks started laughing and Grant started laughing. The irony of it all was too much. This was better stunt casting than the Long Riders two decades later
1..Rock Hudson plays the foremost authority on freshwater fishing but he's a phony. He can't stand anything about them. Especially the way they smell.
2..Rock Hudson was as gay as it gets. We knew it then, we know it now.
3. Rock Hudson was one of the biggest male sex symbols in history. Only Grant and maybe Flynn were bigger. Women loved Rock Hudson.
4. But he was a phony. He LIKED women in a.patronizing, condescending way..He may never have touched one.
5. There's a tired old joke about what women smell like without perfume: fish. I remember a cartoon of an elderly well-dressed blind man passing by a fish market. He says "Ah, youth!" nostalgically.
7. So America's biggest ladies man who's a,phony plays America's biggest expert on fish, and HE'S a phony.
8. And to top it off, fish (the way they smell) connect the actor to the role.
9. Is there any more irony? Why? Do you want more irony before the cameras roll? Okay. Google the phrase Howard Hawks homoeroticism and see what you get. Hawks LOVED subversion, whether genre or gender. Red River is Mutiny On The Bounty. Rio Bravo is a drawing room comedy that's a western only because everyone's wearing a cowboy hat.
He came from money so he viewed the Censors as a challenge to what he could get away with in double entendres. And those double entendres usually referred to anal sex. He got light bondage introduced in The Thing; he introduced the subject of light discipline in I Was A Male War Bride. (Male American officer looking at French Officer Cary Grant: it wouldn't surprise me at all to find out he beats her. Female American Officer: he can beat me anytime and I'll bring the stick.)
In 1938, opening lines: Alice, I think this bone should go in the tail
He says, holding a dinosaur bone for a brontosaurus he's assembling.
Alice Swallow, his fiancee and assistant: Nonsense David. You tried it in the tail yesterday and it wouldn't fit.
Later, forced to wear a frilly woman's robe or go naked, he answers the door and is confronted by a well-dressed older woman.
Cary: Who are you?
Woman: Who are YOU?
Cary: I don't know. I'm not myself today.
Woman: But why are you wearing THOSE clothes?
Cary: I just went GAY all of a sudden!!
In 1938. Now, upper class male urban homosexuals had been using that word since the 1920s. If the general public didn't know it Grant and Hawks did. Two other movies from the 30s had tried to slip that word in but had been censored. But Bringing Up Baby was produced and directed by Howard Hawks and starred Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. It was an A list comedy. And anyway, Hawks told the censors that they had dirty minds. This embarrassed them so they let it pass. And it would be 30 years before the public associated the word "gay" with homosexuality.
So Hawks wasn't afraid to go there with the casting of Rock Hudson. And the civilized world is all the better for it.
The Post (2017)
Prequel
The Pentagon Papers exposed the fact that 50,000 Americans died needlessly. Spielberg should make THAT movie.
But any film about the Washington Post vs. Nixon runs smack into one of the top ten movies ever made:All The President's Men.
That movie was about Woodward getting assigned to cover a minor burglary. He hears McCord say that he worked for the CIA And suddenly it might not be a minor burglary. But what is it? That's the thread he and Bernstein pull on and it keeps getting bigger and stranger. It's about shoe leather journalism. We find out as they find out. But since we know the ending a sinister menace is in every scene. The most mundane conversation carries a we-came-this-close-to-fascism vibe that The Post can't match. It's like a WW2 movie. We know the ending but there were a lot of close calls along the way.
And since The Post can't match that it's kinda bloodless. ANY movie about The Post will run straight into All The President's Men. And if you're not going to make a movie about all the needless deaths, then you'd better bring something different to the table.
The Post really doesn't.
Outbreak (1995)
Indiana Jones, MD
Terrific film but it's really slow. There are all sorts of medical scenes and they blame a bunch of events on germs and viruses. Things would have been.faster with more car chases and gory violence. The fight against the aliens should have been the focus, since they introduced the disease via androids from the future, sent by the Klingon/Empire/Neo-Nazi axis of inter-starsystem Evil.
But there are good moments: the boxing match in the Congo between Dustin Hoffman and the polar bear, the tension arising from Hoffman and Rene Russo being ex-married to each other and then remarrying at the end (kinda sentimental but believable), Cuba Gooding's part as their son who sneezes a lot, the U-boat scenes, and the sacrifice of Hoffman when he saves Russo from drowning when their honeymoon liner sinks from the torpedo hits, Russo saving Hoffman's championship middle weight belt from being lost in the icy waters of the war-torn north Atlantic.
But Morgan Freeman was.terrible as President Lincoln and also Lincoln was.the president during Vietnam, I think. They should have used a black Trans-Am instead of the mustang from Bullet because it goes faster. That city in Alaska that was quarantined was unrealistic since Alaska is so close to Hawaii, judging by the map. Donald Sutherland was too wooden as the general with ivory handled pistils who slaps the blacksmith-activist. And star fighters with glas-pack mufflers? Give me a break!!
But the ending was decent. I don't think the hand of God has ever been shown so realistically.
Signed, the millennial Jedi.
Midway (2019)
Halfway to Classic
This movie looks great compared to the 1976 film, but it's too narrowly focused on a few characters from the Enterprise and doesn't have the grand sweep of war in a.fog that the first had. The Pearl Harbor opening wasn't as necessary as the Doolittle Raid. That raid prompted the IJN to adopt the Midway plan to finish off the Americans. So Doolittle was necessary but didn't need to take up as much time as it did. But it did serve also to show the brutality of the Japanese Army as they slaughtered a quarter million Chinese for helping the Raiders.
The first movie had codebreaker Rochefort as comic relief, but this one thankfully does not. But it misses an opportunity for Rochefort to explain WHY navy musicians make great codebreakers. It also leaves out the PBY search, which I found so suspenseful in the first Midway. The info from the search planes comes in drips and drabs to finally reveal the Japanese carrier fleet.
And it doesn't show the blindness of the Japanese admirals. Why were there so many American search planes out? That wasn't normal for Midway. And for that matter why were the Japanese jumped at The Coral Sea battle? All of this should have clued the Japanese in to the fact that America had cracked their Naval code. In fact, it's not even brought up that Nimitz was risking an awful lot by acting on his codebreakers' info at Coral Sea. The IJN was absolutely blind or willfully ignorant of what the Americans were up to and why they suddenly seemed to be everywhere they shouldn't be. And why was Midway Island itself suddenly home to every type of plane we could cram onto it.
Churchill famously said that intelligence and codebreaking cut both ways; if one acted on it, one would alert the enemy to the fact that codes needed changing. So the British didn't risk it. But Nimitz did risk it because the intelligence was so crucial. The Japanese HAD to be checked at the Coral Sea for Australia's same, and we HAD to stop them at Midway, else Pearl Harbor and the west coast could be lost.
So the 2019 Midway shows us the Enterprise and her pilots as well as the codebreakers. It doesn't show the Marine aviators on Midway, their attempts at dive bombing as well as Red Parks' obsolete fighters. It doesn't show the Air Corps using high altitude bombers or PBYs carrying torpedoes harassing the Japanese fleet all morning. Of course showing all that would confuse the audience as much as it did the Japanese. Waldron finding the Japanese for the carriers finally alerted the better trained Navy aviators aboard the carriers but even then Waldron didn't radio their position.
This Midway shows Wade McCluskey effectively ending any doubt as to the outcome of the war. Had he not chosen to follow the destroyer he sighted, who knows how the battle would have gone? And had Dick Best not taken his two fellow dive bombers to strike the second carrier they saw, the same applies. And then there's Max Leslie's dive bombers showing up at the same time as McCluskey that really sealed the deal.
So this movie is close to perfect but close doesn't count. Perfection is the VFX of this movie applied to the chess game of the 1976 movie. No....perfection is the VFX of this movie applied to a ten hour movie.
Ed Wood (1994)
Ed Wood the worst? Think again.
Ed Wood was not the worst director by far, or the weirdest. He saw action as a marine in Tarawa, the most savage battle of WW2 for all you D-DAY afficianodos, doing something that had not been done since 1066: taking a technologically equal stronghold that knew the enemy was coming, fortified it, and still had it taken from them by amphibious assault and landing. Marines paid dearly with their lives to teach the American military valuable lessons in amphibious warfare. And. Ed. Wood was there, doing what draft dodger John Wayne should have been doing. And Wood was no Kazan or Bogart about his personal life. He'd gladly tell anybody anything he knew about his private life, unlike j Edgar or nearly anyone in Hollywood, including Spencer Tracy, K Hepburn, Walter Pigeon, or Greer Carson (she dug young men and more power to her), and was closer in spirit to Errol Flynn and Robert Mitchum and Don Rickles and Lenny Bruce, none of whom gave a rat's ass what anyone thought of them.
And as a director "bad" should be redefined to include competent hacks like r.g. Springsteen and Richard Bare and Richard Donner and William Wyler and DeMille and Spielberg and Lucas, the latter two elevating competent hackery to an aspirational level - movies made by a committee of bean counters. And then we come to the REALLY bad directors, DW Griffith, Leni Riefenstahl, Victor Fleming, and William Wyler, the first two making extremely well done Klan Nazi movies (Birth Of A Nation & Triumph of the Will and Olympiad, while the latter two made pro-slavery movies like Jezebel, Gone With The Wind, and Ben-Hur...yes, Ben-Hur owned slaves). THAT should be our criterion: what are these competent hacks selling? What studios are pushing their films? Do these directors care about what they're making? Or is it just another paycheck to them? Regardless it's competence in service to evil, to white supremacy, to fascism. If I remember right, didn't we fight a war against this crap?
Ex Wood: his heart was in the right place.
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
As for Hepburn...
If you watch this movie knowing nothing about Katharine Hepburn, you might think KH had already been a veteran comedic actress when she signed on for Hawks' madcap monument to Silliness. Her timing, line-reading, and way of looking at Cary Grant are flawless.
But this was her first comedy. She was a serious actress who studied her part the way she'd study any dramatic role. This was the later strategy for using dramatic actress Jean Hagen as Lola Lamont in Singing In The Rain. Both of these dramatic stage actresses studied, prepared, and brought no memories of bad comedies with them to their roles. The audience sees nothing but the finished outcome of their preparations.
And it wasn't the big flop it's made out to have been. Its success, though, was spotty and unpredictable, losing in NYC but doing well in the West Coast urban areas, for instance. The inability of distributors to pigeonhole this movie drove them crazy. So they blamed Hepburn and lauded Grant.
And why not? Grant was the best and greatest film actor ever. Over the course of three films with Hawks, Grant and Howard invented "Cary Grant" with BUB in 1938, Only Angels Have Wings in 1939, and His Girl Friday in 1940. The Awful Truth made Grant a star of ROMCOMs, but his films with Hawks turned him into befuddled nerd, a macho unsentimental tough guy who's slightly sadistic and a macho tough guy editor who's ruthless and slightly sadistic yet principled about printing the truth. And he was utterly believable as all three.
Hawks said of Grant "He's got funny in his bones," meaning he shows up and the audience assumes he's hilarious. Grant just adjusts the level and tempo.
And his size and athleticism made him an effortless macho leader of men.
Hepburn was athletic as well, but her physical comedy was rarely used. Spencer Tracy may have loved her but Grant LIKED her, and her best performances were opposite Cary Grant.
Outside Bringing Up Baby Hepburn was never cuter, more adorable, just plain likeable. Her Susan Vance loves Cary's David so much that it's palpable.
This movie has two references to The Awful Truth's comedy of remarriage. First, ex-wife Irene Dunne breaks up Grant's engagement to Barbara VANCE. And both Dunne and Hepburn, in wild tales about Cary Grant's past, refer to him as 'Jerry the Nipper.' No one seems to have noticed this.
Blow-Up (1966)
Smartest movie ever made
Blow-Up isn't about the nature of reality. It's about context and the ability of people to perceive "facts and truth" out of images.
1. No one.can read the woman's uncalm face. Terror? Excitement? Horniness? About to sneeze? About to laugh? We don't know and neither does Thomas. We DO know the woman REALLY wants those photos.
2. There WAS a murder. We clearly see the gunman in one of the enlargements. He is undeniably THERE. But does the woman see him? Don't know. She's looking in the general area of the gunman. But has Thomas lined up the photos correctly? He doesn't know; we don't know.
3. Thomas goes back to the park. He finds the dead body of the older male lover. He's really there. Thomas touches him. It's no hallucination or mannequin. The eyes are open but it's really the dead body of the male lover.
4. Instead of calling the cops, the overly ambitious Thomas returns for his camera to get pix,BEFORE the cops arrive. He discovers his studio broken into and all photographic evidence gone.
5. Okay but there's still the dead body. But when he returns to the park with his camera, the body is gone.
6. Now he has nothing. He doesn't know any names, has no photos and has no dead.body. Because the whole incident is weird, he begins to doubt...everything. WE don't because it's a movie and we see weird crap all the time. Outside of a movie theater we'd probably feel like Thomas. Especially if no one else saw, heard, or touched anything.
Movies spoon-feed context to us. We get the inner motivations of characters. And we get closure. No one doubts what they've seen.
7. The drug use and the sex is casual and almost beside the point. It's there because that's life in swinging London in 1966.
If only Thomas had called the cops. But the body would probably still have been taken.
Coppola's The Conversation tried to do for sound what Blow-up did for images. But Coppola cheated. He changed the crucial line reading of He'd KILL US if he had the chance to HE'D kill US if he had the chance after the surveillance expert got it wrong. But that doesn't happen in Blow-Up. The photos don't change. The body was real. Thomas didn't get anything wrong. He just had no,idea who was,thinking what and why it all happened and who stole the photos and took the body. But he began doubting...everything.
The Creation of the Humanoids (1962)
The Land of Clockwork Cotton
There's this war, see, WWIII, and it kills off 98% or 99% of the people. That still leaves a lot of people to breed us back to our former selves. But our fertility rate is low, two people are only making 1.4 children per household. And that's a foolproof extinction plan. What do we do?
Robots. Robots do all the heavy lifting. Then they start doing almost all the work. And they're looking more and more like us all the time. They go by codes as to HOW human they are. An R58 is 58% human, meaning it's capable of 58% duplication of humanity.
An R70 is as high as.robots go. Until the R96 comes along and copies humanity almost perfectly. Except for the one ability we have to procreate.
This is all homespun Rod Sterling except for the Sidewise History/Harry Turtledove vibe. Turtledove and Sidewise History is all a big "what if...?" kind of thing. Like aliens invading earth during WWII,or the south winning the Civil War or the Japanese invading Hawaii on Dec. 7th 1941.
This movie is about the ante-bellum South. Robots are slaves, nicknamed "Clickers", affairs are called "rapports", and there's a paramilitary group called The Order of Flesh And Blood. How's that for an SS reference? They dress so much like Confederates that I started looking for a sash.
There are affairs between humans and the androids they've bought. And at the end there's talk of robots procreating with other robots. Humanity will eventually be replaced. And is this a,bad thing?
There's too much dialogue and not enough alternate history, of the Southern planter class surviving and seeming to prosper. Of the slavery of robots who do all the work and rob humans of the desire for work. This new planter class in a new ante bellum South needed to be explored more deeply. It touches on many things, but none are gone into enough, except for the "rapport" between the sister of the hero and her robot.
Still and all, just touching on something is more than most movies do.
The Alphabet Murders (1965)
Tony Randall Forever
I'll watch anything Tony Randall is in, since he always classes up everything he is in. Like this movie. Given the script, director, and supporting cast, only Randall could make this into a very watchable film.
Why Tony Randall never got a best supporting actor Oscar is beyond me. And when he's the lead actor, all the better, because there's more screentime for him.
Add Anita Ekberg and you have the recipe for supremely watchable. And this movie is that. But it could've been a.lot worse without Randall. It's superior to Rock Hunter and Mating Game, two other starring vehicles for him. And I'd take him over Jack Lemon as a comic actor; a little Lemmon goes a long way.
Do yourself a favor and watch this movie.
A Night of Adventure (1944)
Very very good legal thriller
Forget farces like A Few Good Men and 12Angry Men and lump this movie with My Cousin Vinny. It's a sneakily enjoyable courtroom drama that feels more realistic than most. Tom Conway is very good as the crack criminal lawyer defending his wife's possible lover for two reasons: sadism and he KNOWS the truth. He's not the killer but he was there. And before he succeeds in winning his client's freedom, he can't resist making the guy squirm for a few days. I enjoyed this twist on Presumed Innocent. The courtroom scenes have a more realistic tone than most legal thrillers and it's fun watching Tom Conway make his client squirm with "No questions" over and over with prosecution witnesses. The happy ending has a genuine tone, also.
Watch this one. It's different and you might really enjoy it. I won't guarantee you will but this one is genuinely offbeat.
Holiday (1938)
What Isms Does Johnny Want.To Check Out?
Two things.bother me about this movie. First, people, rich people, don't talk about loving money. They ACT like it, but they don't talk about it. What they talk about is a healthy economy, work, giving good jobs to people, (in the 1930s) having a heavy industry basis in order to be the Arsenal Of Democracy, loving the work that made them rich, and just plain work. They don't talk about money; they talk about the love of work and capitalism that got them that money. Social comedies MUST be grounded in a realistic depiction of human behavior or no one will pay attention to what you are saying. Your point, your TRUTH will only be rhetorical; it'll sound and look made up.
It's why High Noon doesn't work. No sheriff would behave like Gary Cooper. A shotgun loaded with bird shot is a good arrest warrant for the lesser thugs at the train station and later for Big Thug. But he doesn't and High Noon screams MOVIE! IT'S ONLY A MOVIE!!!
Second, what 1937/1938 isms could be out there? You have three economies: capitalist, socialist, and communist. Totalitarian governments force people into one of those three systems.
Governmental isms then include Nazism, fascism, Socialism, Communism, Totalitarianism, and Republicanism (the 'ism' of democracy). You could throw militarism and industrialism and fraternalism in but they don't work.
So what does Johnny want?.He has: Capitalism,Socialism, and Communism to pick from for an economy. He has Republicanism, Totalitarianism, and Fascism for a form of government. Soviet Communism and German Nazism and Italian Fascism are local Totalitarian governments. So what does Johnny want?
The Girl (2012)
When Studios Roamed The Earth
It's been suggested that Tippi Hedren lied about Hitchcock since no one else came out against him. BS. During the 30s to early 60s,actors and actresses didn't rock the boat. They stayed frieny with men who abused them or angered them. Studio execs were a powerful boys club, and if you attacked one, you.attacked them all. The only actor I ever heard attacking a studio big shot was Errol Flynn physically attacking director Michael. Curtiz for using trip wire during the Charge of the Light Brigade. Dozens of horses were injured and about 30 had to be put down. Appalled, Flynn.went straight for Curtiz and attacked him. He had to be pulled away from killing Curtis, he was so angry. No one punished him. They knew he had a hot temper and didn't care if he was blacklisted - he'd go back to Australia in a.heartbeat.
Tippi couldn't physically fight Hitchcock or go to any other country to work. As for Bergman, Kelly, and Novak, what would be the upside in attacking/accusing Hitchcock? He was a very powerful director and could get anyone blacklisted for even.telling it friends. Better to stay on good terms with him. Look at Harvey Weinstein and who stayed friends with him for years even.after being assaulted..Besides, the casting couch wasn't a fairy tale. These girls knew the score: keep.your mouth shut and you might get rich.
Tippi waited a long time before telling of her being assaulted. The small.details of her story make the whole thing have the ring of truth. I believe her. And I believe she wasn't the only one.
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Know what you're getting into
First, this is a movie about rape. That's what happens near the end. Madeline Kahn's Elizabeth is raped by Peter Boyle's monster. It's as plain and simple as that. And what is the audience/viewer expected to feel? Humor. Yes, the rape is meant to be funny. Well, you say, it was made in 1974. And...? People were different then. How...? They weren't as sophisticated then. The rape went along with 3-martini lunches and fedoras. Well, that's not true about the 60s, 70s, and 80s. People were MORE sophisticated then. And we didn't need music cues and applause signs to tell us how and what to feel.
Elizabeth screams at the approach of the creature. Then she faints. She wakes up in a cave, with Peter Boyle standing over her. She makes it clear that she wants out. She says no in every conceivable way. Boyle strips. Sex occurs.
But wait. There's more. After the creature pulls down his pants, Elizabeth sees that the creature has an enormous erection. She consents by saying woof!
In Blazing Saddles, Brooks has a lot of racist characters. But he changes the focus so we can criticize the racists and laugh at them. This doesn't happen in YF. Here we go up or down, darkness or light. We laugh at.the rape victim. But we also saw the rapist/murderer kill a jailhouse guard to get away.
And we are supposed to laugh at the rape. No, we can't do that. We're supposed to laugh but we can't because there isn't enough people to reenact the robbery/rape. We're supposed to laugh at the sexists. We're not supposed to be alive at the end. We're NEVER supposed to laugh at rape. It's sort of a common sense thing.
Bedtime Story (1964)
Shirley Jones & Marlon Brando??No, Unfortunately For Miss Jones
In her autobiography, Jones makes a point of mentioning every film in which she had to fight off her male co-star and did so, remaining true to her husband, Jack Cassidy. Apparently, her husband made three Forrest Tuckers. She mentioned Cassidy's organ every time she mentioned Cassidy. And apparently it was important to her that her co-stars all come on to her. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that when she mentioned Bedtime Story, she tells of an early point in filming, Marlon Brando asked her if she'd stay after shooting that day. She sighed and said she would, wanting to appear friendly yet prepared to defend her marriage vows.
So she stayed late and Brando invited her to his trailer. She sighs again and accompanies him to his trailer. And what happened? Brando wanted to run lines with her! He was so cold and professional! He didn't make pass one at her the entire filming! Can you believe the gall!
Brando wanted to learn comedy and comic timing. He wasn't Warren Beatty, bedding every woman in his zip code. And he did learn comic timing. This movie shows it. Niven was born with it. Of course, he was English. They work differently. I don't know if Brando sought his advice, but it probably have done him no good. English acting is...Robert Donat.
Mother and Child (2009)
chick flick? This?
Sorry but maybe 2/3 of it is, and Naomi Watts is the other 1/3 and she owns it. Elizabeth is a sexual predator, a maneating homewrecking dominatrix, who destroys lives for fun.
Sex symbol? Naomi Watts?. Yes, because she knows that sex appeal comes from being inhumanely self-possessed, blessed with ironclad self-confidence and the ability to take oneself as seriously as an assassin. You'd have to go to The Last Seduction's Linda Fiorentino or maybe Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate to find a woman this frightening. Watts may be as cute, perky and innocent-looking and wholesome in real life, but she can flick a switch and become Clytemnestra or Lady Macbeth or Becky Sharpe from the novel Vanity Fair.
Laura Linney could pull this off but she's American, and American actresses who are serious don't take roles about hyper-sexual predators who use sex to get what they want. They're liberated. British actresses get nude at the drop of a hat. Look at Watts, Kidman or Mirren.
Mother And Child will sell a lot of DVDs and Blu-ray discs. To Men.
Monk: Mr. Monk and the Naked Man (2007)
David Lynch, Twin Peaks, and Mr Monk
This episode reveals the Monks as the most masochist and sadistic marriage EVER shown on tv. It's completely asexual, Trudy is punishing herself for the Judge, and Monk is happy because he got a marriage ON HIS TERMS,which is all he cares about. If he truly loved Trudy, he'd try to help them both. But he's dead inside and feels nothing, not even the happiness Trudy supposedly brought to him. And the show wants us to enjoy their married life. We can't. He's a sadist..hestomps his feet and cries if the world doesn't confirm to him. And that includes his wife. DON'T GIVE THIS a free pass for the death of his wife. She's better off now.
Monk: Mr. Monk and the UFO (2009)
Number 2
The second best MONK. Funny AND a sexy Natalie. Thank you, Daniel Stern. Thank you, Eric Stone street. And uhm thank you, Traylor Howard, for trying to see Monk's navel. Oddly sexy.
Now, if only the desert trek could equal the one Mr. Chevy Chase took in the first VACATION. But not even Stern or Shalhoub could ever equal The Greatest Comic Actor since Buster Keaton.
But how bad does that make it? And who cares how good or so so the mystery was? We watch to see Monk interact with humans. And I don't care if his speech to the Internet People was stolen from SNL. It's still a good speech for the STAR WARS crowd.
Monk: Mr. Monk on Wheels (2009)
The best. And Monk's worst.
This is my favorite episode of MONK. Great script, great performances, and the inestimable presence of one Bradley Whitford, who lifts everyone up around him. Or down, in the case of the character of Adrian Monk, who is at his meanest, miserliest, unlovable best. Or worst. The script cheers you to boo Monk, and we do. We're even glad Natalie shoots him in the other leg. The humor comes from Natalie's seriousness about "a stolen bicycle case" and Monk's embarrassed attitude about it. Randy Disher is at his quirkiest (the former cop shooter dialogue is great, as is Disher's insistence that the basket might be made of gold). The Sanitation worker scene is a gem, the Bike Squad scene is a gem, and on and on. The heart is Whitford's eco-politically correct scientist who lifts everyone in the case to higher than normal levels. And Shalhoub is right there with him, making Monk as mean-spirited as he ever was in the series.
From the West Wing to Cabin in the Woods to Get Out, Whitford is right there, lending comic acting chops and class and timing to all. All of those tv shows and movies would not be as good if bereft of his talent. Like Jeff Goldblum in any movie or Daniel Stern in any rare appearance in front of the camera, like Monk's UFO episode, Bradley Whitford is unsung to most in the audience who only say, "Hey, I know that guy! He's always good." and let it go at that. But those of us who appreciate great character work, these guys are often, no, usually the difference between good and very good. And yes I know Jeff Goldblum is well-known, but he hasn't been a real leading man since...The Fly? Independence Day? He shoulda gone to tv with the right project. So should Stern. Okay, he narrated The Wonder Years but we deserve more of him.
And Whitford is too much in demand from the movies as a supporting player.
But we have this episode of MONK. And this episode of MONK has him.
Monk: Mr. Monk Goes to the Bank (2008)
Natalie's Best
I love this episode but I couldn't defend that love on any reasonable level. I've always thought Traylor Howard was incredibly sexy. And for some reason her unexpected flirting with Monk makes me watch this episode over all but a few other episodes. This episode just brings out her sex appeal for me more than others. Her character was painted as an honestly sexual single mom from her start. And her interactions with Randy have for me always had a slightly teasing edge to them.
So I think she's hot. So sue me. And I love this episode. And I write fan fiction in my head over this one and a couple of more. The one where Monk shoots a Santa is another. The Lotto Fever episode not so much, nor the Las Vegas one. The submarine episode sorta. The UFO episode is a strong runner-up, Natalie-wise.
And I missed completely her previous series, so I don't know about that Traylor Howard-wise.
Deliverance (1972)
One of the great American movies, one of the great movies ABOUT America.
This is one of the best movies in history. What's it about? It's about 4 guys from the city on a weekend camping/rafting trip. It's about the war in Vietnam. It's about the settling of the nation. It's about the entire American experience. Aeschylus could have written the spare story. No character is shown who does not have to be there. What happens in this deceptively simple movie is so wide open as to carry the weight of any American theme you can name. Any human theme. It can stand with Citizen Kane, Blow-up, On the Waterfront, The Bicycle Thief, the best of Buster Keaton, Howard Hawks'best. Like that. And it's also about limitations, human limits, the limits of civilized power and the power to civilized, the limits of law and order, the limitations of justice, the limitations of revenge, and the limitations of what we call masculinity. How can you tell it's not just an action/adventure movie? Because the SCENE is not the end of it (and the SCENE's resolution). Deliverance is so much more than THE SCENE. Everything begins closing in after that SCENE. Nothing is delivered. No one is delivered. The film ends. It has to. But the story and characters keep going without the benefit of being on celluloid. It keeps going in the minds of anyone who sees it. Deliverance deserves books written about it. And a hundred books wouldn't be enough.
4 guys go into northern Georgia for a weekend. They encounter what they perceive as the Other. But after the first encounter, things keep haunting them, physically and emotionally. There is true non-supernatural horror. There is death. Murder? Justifiable? Unknown. Or rather, open to debate. There is more death. Characters are broken in mind and spirit and body. An entire American community is seen dying, down to graves and churches and ... what constitutes a community. This is not a fun rollercoaster ride because so much matters and we care about the leads and we care about ourselves yet the ride never ends...how could it? The story is constructed that way. We see actions we might normally applaud but those actions have the consequences of real life and the consequences that other people bring to the story; the 4 leads are not safe from the reality of other people and THEIR stubborn insistence on their own lives and actions as human beings with their own agency.
And the plot can be summed up in 2 or 3 sentences.
And it is a horror movie. Never doubt that. The director of the first Stephen King adaptation lifted his final scene from the final scene of Deliverance. The so-called perky theme is played by ghosts over the end credits, faint, hard to hear, and echo-ey. Get Out also contains an old-timey song, and it is played exactly the same way and is no longer perky or upbeat. A Clockwork Orange features an old upbeat song, but it is sung by the leader of a teenaged gang as he rapes a woman and assaults her husband.
Deliverance is horror that never ends. No one has clean hands, not even the vocal proponent of right and wrong. Not even him.
No one learns, no one triumphs. There is only living day to day in a world filled with horror for everyone. There might be intermittent moments of peace and beauty and maybe even feeling a connection to another person but it's soon back to the horror.