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.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Star Trek's first film incarnation is a bit interesting. Conceptually that is, not so much to watch. Being released ten years after the series ended, the whole main cast returns, though they've all aged visibly in the meantime. So their characters aged as well, showing Kirk as an admiral now, retaking command of an updated Enterprise on a dangerous mission. It's well over half an hour before the crew is back together, and I think about fifty minutes in when he finally reunites with Spock. Needless to say, the movie's pace is slow. There's really not that much going on as far as a conflict - an alien threat exists, but it doesn't put the main cast in a whole lot of apparent danger. I'll admit I didn't pay as much attention as I could have, but I didn't see a whole lot of the movie really striving for me to do so. It's interesting to see what was big in special effects at the end of the 70s, but that's really about it. The subplot involving the displaced captain and some bald woman proved to be fairly important, but still, it was struggling at the edge of doing something compelling. It's hard to really dislike anything about the series, but this movie bored me for most of its duration.