Movie Update 13

Here is a brief summary about my movie watching and the fact that these movies are all movies and that I like watching movies.

The African Queen


Some weird combination of an adventure, a buddy road picture, and a romantic comedy, The African Queen rests almost entirely on the shoulders of its two leads, played excellently as always by Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. He's an eccentric, hard-drinking boatman and she's an uptight religious woman, so the conflict between them is obvious at first, but the way their relationship develops as they face the various perils of their journey through the waters of Africa is constantly intriguing. I haven't fallen in love with any of John Huston's work yet, but he's nothing if not an extremely competent director in a variety of styles and moods. Good ending, too.

Gone with the Wind

For the 1930s, this is a pretty darn remarkable technical achievement. Vivien Leigh and especially Clark Gable do really good jobs in their roles. And those are about the only truly positive things I have to say about this film. It's an overly long story with not a whole lot of real enjoyable substance. Scarlett doesn't have much character beyond being an opportunistic homewrecker, and there's no really great alternatives to latch on to. I don't require characters in a story to be likable, but there's gotta be something, and this just seemed like a long series of unfortunate romantic events set (pretty effectively) against a dramatic historical backdrop.

The Sugarland Express


Steven Spielberg's first real theatrical film isn't bad, though it isn't great either. Goldie Hawn stars as a troubled young woman who breaks her husband out of what's basically a halfway house I guess to help rescue their young child from his adoptive parents. They end up getting chased by the police, holding one hostage, and leading them all on a grand chase across the country to Sugarland, where their kid lives. There's some humor and some brief action and some family drama. The most interesting part is the relationship that grows between the couple and their captive over the couple days the story takes place in. Other than that, it tends to drag here and there. There should be more urgency to a chase movie than this. It's mostly based on a true story, which is probably more remarkable than the film itself. You can definitely see the promise his career would later capitalize on.

Tootsie


I've seen parts of this before, but this is my first time watching the thing start to finish. I'm not usually a patron of films heavily featuring cross-dressing main characters, but the difference between most of them and Tootsie as I see it is they don't bother to make their female counterparts compelling in any way, while Michael Dorsey's Dorothy Michaels alter-ego becomes a full character in her own right. Dustin Hoffman is great, Bill Murray is possibly more great in a smaller role as his roommate, and the film is a nice combination of a truly funny comedy and a solid romantic drama about people who want what they can't have. It was a little too early 80s for my taste in places, but for the most part Tootsie is just a likable, fun movie from start to finish.

Movie Update 10

A couple Best Picture winners, and a couple films that lost the award to Rebecca in 1940.

The Grapes of Wrath


I've always kind of wished I read more than one John Steinbeck book, and this didn't change that. I'm not sure how well John Ford's film translated the original story, but it's still a great movie especially because of the flavorful (especially for the 40s) dialogue and some outstanding performances. Henry Fonda is a good main character and Jane Darwell is good as the mother, and both deliver memorable speeches well. The best work though might be done by John Carradine as a former preacher who gets mixed up in the Joad family's journey. Somewhat depressing but worthwhile.

Midnight Cowboy


I usually like Dustin Hoffman, but strangely I thought he hurt this movie a little bit. His performance is generally fine, it's just the voice he puts on seems really fake and distracting. It's not too bad though, and Jon Voight is pretty outstanding in the real lead role. This is one of those movies that's full of stuff that's just wormed its way into the collective unconscious, and seeing it all play out was interesting. I found the story itself occasionally dull, though it begins and ends pretty well. It's a unique movie, and a solid one.

The Philadelphia Story


Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant might be the two best leading men of the era, and putting them in the same movie with Katharine Hepburn, well... it's almost disappointing that the movie is just really good rather than a masterpiece. It's a solid romantic comedy if not actually a particularly funny one, with really good performances propelling a twisty little love story. It's just fun seeing all these people together, and it's just the old school Hollywood machine doing its thing well.

The Sound of Music


I liked this more than I expected I would, for some reason. Usually I don't go for this extremely family friendly kind of thing, but I don't know, it's just a pleasant experience. I almost didn't mind the nearly three hour running time. Nice songs, nice performances, nice message. Nice movie. Surprisingly funny, too. Plus it was entertaining spotting the tons of references from cartoons and other movies throughout.

Movie Update 1

I won't name all my posts like this, I'm just catching up right now.

Bringing Up Baby

I'm taking a film class this quarter and we watch a movie every week. The first was Casablanca, which I had previously seen, and is completely great. After that we saw a few silent movies, and then this, an example of the "screwball comedy" which has died out since it was released. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are both great actors and work well together to create a funny movie. It seems overly silly nowadays, but it works if you don't take it too seriously. It's full of sitcom situations and enjoyable fast-talking, and I guess it works if you want to see what people like to laugh at a long time ago.

The Gold Rush



One of two silent comedies we saw on the same day, Charlie Chaplin's film about recurring character "The Tramp" and his attempt to find love and riches in the cold north. I don't think he's as funny as Buster Keaton, at least in these two movies, but I think this may be a better film as far as emotional range and actual filmmaking go. It does have many funny moments, and is probably as good an example you're going to find of what silent movies were all about.

Inside Man

Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster have been two of the better actors in Hollywood for a while, and Clive Owen has only started to emerge in the last few years, but I've already grown to like him a lot. You put all three of them together in a movie with an interesting, twisty heist plot behind it and it's probably going to be pretty good. Everyone plays their part well (although what exactly Foster's character was supposed to be was a little vague), and it creates a nice tension where you aren't sure what you want to happen. Owen's bank robbery isn't quite what it appears to be, and the script is great, filled with smart dialogue and an interesting structure as scenes with the two cops interrogating the victims after the fact are spliced in to the normal narrative, leaving you guessing.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

I've got to see more movies with Robert Downey Jr. Between this and A Scanner Darkly, I've decided he's the best actor today when it comes to funny, quirky characters that you find yourself liking even if they aren't the best people. Val Kilmer is almost as funny and Michelle Monaghan is great as the girl who used to be a slut but is really just a clever, nice person at heart. All of the actors work together well in this hilarious take on a mystery movie which has some of the best narration I've ever heard. It continually tops itself with how crazy it gets, and is just extremely fun to watch.

Ocean's Twelve


Yet another movie completely stacked with big-name actors, almost to the point of absurdity. It's not as good as the remake it's a sequel of, but it still has its moments. It has a few too many music-focused montages and it doesn't really spend as much time on actual heisting as it should. It spends more time on the cat-and-mouse between the different characters and seems to be pretty far from the first.

It's got pretty enjoyable dialogue, although maybe the cast is just a little too big to give all the characters the screen-time they deserve. While they spend time fleshing out Brad Pitt's relationship with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bernie Mac is almost completely absent and Shaobo Qin seems like a utilitarian throwaway. The big "gotcha" twist at the end is okay at first, but it seems a bit lame to me in retrospect because you don't really get a chance to figure it out yourself and it renders a very large part of the movie a complete waste of time. I enjoyed watching it, but hopefully the upcoming sequel gets back to the best parts of the whole concept.

Sherlock Jr.

The other silent comedy, maybe not as well-formed as The Gold Rush but I found it to be more enjoyable. Buster Keaton is a master of both subtle and completely physical comedy, and Sherlock Jr. contains probably the best comedic chase scene I've ever seen. It also has a great, innovative sequence involving a character stepping inside a movie screen. It's oddly structured, as the main thread is partly abandoned in favor of the movie within the movie, but it's a really pleasant watch.

Spirited Away

I've only seen a few films by Hayao Miyazaki, but I can tell he's one of the best creative minds to ever do animation. Spirited Away is endlessly inventive with setting, character, and plot, and is realized with very good, naturalistic animation. Miyazaki is great at creating realistic protagonists that you genuinely like and root for. It's one of those movies that just has a soul, with a great atmosphere that can be both frightening and heart-warming. Seriously, the guy is a genius.

Unknown

I had never heard of this small movie before I saw it, which seemed weird to me because of its great cast. The concept is interesting and is brought to execution as well as can be expected, with good acting, betrayals, mystery, and twists abound. I've seen better thrillers, but this is certainly a good one. It's a little ambiguous about what exactly happens, but it's not too hard to follow and is definitely an interesting ride.

Way Down East

A silent film by famed film pioneer and racist D.W. Griffith. The cut we saw in class was quite long, and it seemed like it took forever, but I wasn't all that bored to be honest, so I guess it's an accomplishment. It's pretty damn primitive nowadays, but back then this was groundbreaking stuff. It has funny moments and a well-structured story that reflects the values Griffith wanted to convey. The ending sequence is pretty far out there and seems out of place, but it's not a bad movie at all.