Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
So, the last time we talked Romantic Comedies on Thursday Movie Picks, I picked three terrible movies that, for whatever absurd reason, I love anyway. I know I can't possibly top that, so I'm gonna play it a bit safer this time around and just pick three of the All-Time Best.
The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940) Socialite divorcée Tracy Lord (the unbeatable Katharine Hepburn) is getting married again! But, sadly for her poor husband-to-be George Kittredge, not only is her lush of a former husband, C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) back, but he has brought with him an incognito reporter and photographer from Spy Magazine. As the wedding approaches, Tracy finds herself still nursing an attraction to Dexter, and finds a growing affection for the journalist Mike Connor (Jimmy Stewart). What a dilemma! Adapted from the stage play by Philip Barry, the dialogue sparkles, and the three stars form an irresistible love triangle through their considerable chemistry with each other (although originally, it was meant to be Clark Gable as Dexter and Spencer Tracy as Mike, which would have been just as delicious). Hepburn originated the role of Tracy Lord in the Broadway production, and bought the film rights for herself as a way to overcome her reputation as "box office poison". It worked: The Philadelphia Story was an instant classic, the fifth highest-grossing film of the year, and earned six Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Actress. It won two Oscars, for Best Screenplay and Best Actor, for Jimmy Stewart (in what is CLEARLY a Supporting role).
The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960) "Did you hear me, Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you." "Shut up and deal." Perfection. Billy Wilder's depressive romantic comedy works almost in spite of itself, solely because of the star power of its leads. Shirley Maclaine is magical as elevator operator Fran Kubelik, in a relationship with married man Fred MacMurray, who uses employee Jack Lemmon's apartment for his extra-marital assignations. I've never found Jack Lemmon attractive EXCEPT for in this movie, in which he is downright swoon-worthy as he cares for Fran's broken heart. Nominated for 10 Oscars, The Apartment actually won Best Picture, as well as Best Director and Original Screenplay.
When Harry Met Sally... (Rob Reiner, 1989) One of the greatest screenplays ever written. When Sally drives Harry to New York from Chicago after they graduate from college, Harry asserts that men and women cannot be friends, because sex always gets in the way. Sally disagrees. Over the course of the next decade, they randomly run into each other a few times, and eventually settle into a kind of friendship... that eventually turns into a kind of attraction. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan have a wholly surprising chemistry as the leads, and Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby are even better as their best friends who fall in love at first sight.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
WELL, I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween! I know I sure did. Maybe even a bit too much of one, but WHO CARES! IT'S THURSDAY! And it's time for another episode of everyone's favorite web movie series! This week: GANGSTERS. Those dapper men of crime who the movies have never stopped loving to glorify...
...and sometimes make fun of.
Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959) Poor, underemployed musicians Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) unintentionally witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. So they escape and go undercover the only way they know how: As female musicians in an all-girl band! Hilarity ensues as they both fall for lead singer Sugar Cane (Marilyn Monroe at her absolute peak) and have to escape mobster Spats Colombo (George Raft) and millionaire wannabe-playboy Osgood Fielding III (comic treasure Joe E. Brown). One of the funniest films ever made, Some Like it Hot is perfection on every level, with so many classic moments it's impossible to keep track.
Bullets Over Broadway (Woody Allen, 1994) Poor playwright David Shayne (John Cusack, one of Woody's best avatars) is not having any luck getting his latest play produced on Broadway. So when mobster Nick Valenti bankrolls the whole thing on the condition that his girlfriend Olive (Jennifer Tilly, genius) be cast as the ingenue, he reluctantly agrees. He then manages to get diva star Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest, GENIUS) as the lead. But then Olive's bodyguard Cheech (Chazz Palminteri) turns out to be a secret genius, constantly making suggestions for the play that actually improve it. How will this all end for David? It's a hilarious route to get there, one of Woody's most purely funny movies. Palminteri, Tilly, and Wiest all deservedly got Oscar nominations for their hilarious performances, with Wiest winning her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her inimitable turn as Helen Sinclair. "DON'T SPEAK!"
Analyze This (Harold Ramis, 1999) Poor mob boss Paul Vitti (Robert DeNiro, deftly parodying himself) is having a problem: After so many years worrying about his standing in the mob and fearing for his life - and after his consiglieri gets shot right in front of him - he's started having panic attacks. So his henchman Jelly takes him to see psychiatrist Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal, perfectly cast), whose car Jelly hit in an accident. Shenanigans, as you can imagine, ensue. It's hard to believe that this perfect mafia parody came out only two months after the premiere of television series The Sporanos, which took a dramatic look at the same subject. But it did, and it was the perfect cultural moment for it. Crystal and DeNiro are clearly having a blast playing off each other, and the script by Ramis, Kenneth Lonergan, and Peter Tolan is clever and chock full of one-liner gems.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Participation is easy: Just pick three movies that fit the week's theme and write a bit about them. It's fun - promise!
This week on Thursday Movie Picks: Meltdowns. These can be lots of fun or very scary to watch, depending. But the greatest ones are the ones we watch happen in slow motion, not necessarily knowing what we're watching until it's too late. Ones like...
Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) The fall of Norma Desmond, Greatest Film Star Of Them All (TM) is a true horror story, and Gloria Swanson's tremendous portrayal is a thing to behold. That famous final scene has become iconic for a reason - the direct address to the camera implicating all of us, the little people in the dark, in creating the monster she became and the pitiful thing she's become. One of the most brilliant films Hollywood has ever produced.
American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999) "I'm just an ordinary guy with nothing to lose," says Kevin Spacey's Lester Burnham. And, well, he actually does have something to lose: his life. This takedown of the seemingly perfect suburbia of America at the turn of the millennium is pitched VERY high, but the moments that work are all-timers: Mena Suvari doing the cheer routine, Lester serving his wife and her lover at the drive-thru window, Annette Bening singing "Don't Rain on My Parade", and that KILLER dinner table scene, a perfect meltdown from both husband and wife. And of course, there's also the video of that damned plastic bag, which you either love or hate.
Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011) Annie is having a rough go of it. In the downturn of the economy she had to close her bakery, and now she has no money and is working at a job she hates. Oh, and her best friend is marrying an apparently pretty wealthy guy. AND wants Annie to be her maid of honor. And the pressure, well... let's just say it gets to her. Kristen Wiig's performance brilliantly toes the line between making us laugh with Annie and laugh at her, often at the same time. The entire cast is phenomenal, but none more so than Rose Byrne's delicious take on the wealthy, effortlessly likable (and effortlessly bitchy) Helen, and scene-stealer Melissa McCarthy, in the role that won her a well-deserved Oscar nomination.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
I'm gonna be honest, guys. Tuesday night wrecked me. Wednesday has been a haze; even my office, usually abuzz with activity and chatter, was dead silent. My voice is horse from all the screaming. My eyes are dried out from all the crying. My feet are sore from all the marching in protest. And my spirit is somewhat defeated from not knowing what to do. I don't have it in me to write a whole lot about this right now, so please, forgive me.
Let's just dive right in, shall we? The subject is addiction. The movies are:
Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011) Pretentious, only occasionally involving twaddle about sex addiction. Fassbender and Mulligan are the only reasons to see it and even then, I'm not sure they're worth the slog through every single goddamn well-trodden trope about addiction.
The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder, 1945) Perhaps a bit over the top, but still powerful look at alcoholism. Ray Milland gives one of the best Best Actor Oscar-winning performances.
Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray, 1956) The best of these three, with the best lead performance, this time from James Mason as a schoolteacher who becomes addicted to cortisone. Nick Ray was a genius filmmaker, and this is well within his typical florid wheelhouse, which he turned into a sort of house of mirrors to critique the male-dominated American society of the 50s. Mason is nothing short of brilliant in the lead.
One of the things that it's easy to forget about Billy Wilder's comic masterpiece Some Like It Hot is that it's actually a bit of a gangster movie. In fact, the opening minutes are so good at it that you'd be forgiven for thinking someone mixed up the reels and put on a Warner Bros. picture instead.
A lot has been said about Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. Which is as it should be, because there's a lot to say about it. But for me, having a lot to say often means that when it comes to writing something, I find myself at a loss for words.
Maybe that was why Joe Gillis had writer's block. He had too much to say. So much so, that he had to narrate his own story from beyond the grave.
I was tempted to say that the famous opening scene shot of William Holden floating on the pool's surface is the film's Best Shot, because I see no reason to include the prologue (and, frankly, Joe's narration) in the film at all other than the fact that it presents practically the whole story of the film in one image. Because the fact is, Sunset Boulevard is perfect, but the story and performances are so engrossing that we really don't need the whole thing to be a flashback. Except that it's too good. The film's story proper opens with Joe evading officials, and from that moment it's clear he's pretty low, but not quite at rock bottom yet. The whole film, he's looking down and slowly sinking into that pool, and he doesn't even know it... except that he does, because he's narrating his own story from beyond the grave.
Narrative semantics aside, I found myself most surprised this go-round on Sunset Boulevard that it's largely about the dangers of hero worship. That makes it incredibly timely given our increasingly obsessed celebrity culture... or maybe that culture hasn't really changed at all, only that it takes less and less to actually be a celebrity. But there's a reason why the film ends with Norma not just creepily walking towards the camera, like a vampiress (seriously, Gloria Swanson is giving some serious Bela Lugosi realness in that final shot) coming for her prey, but with her delivering the last third of her closing monologue straight into the camera, directly to the audience.
She's doing it all for us, you see. It's all our fault. You want to know why Sunset Boulevard didn't win Best Picture and Best Actress in 1950? That right there. It directly implicates the audience in Norma Desmond's downfall. Without a public, those "wonderful people out there in the dark," she wouldn't want to make a comeback return. Without us, she wouldn't even exist, in every possible way. The way she looks right at the audience even calls back to this fantastic earlier shot:
BEST SHOT RUNNER-UP
As Norma adjusts herself in the mirror, her reflection is looking straight at the audience. It's almost as if she can see us - that she doesn't spy herself in the mirror so much as the people watching the film, and realizes that she still has the pieces of her beauty regiment on (and actually, earlier in the film she runs right by the mirror without even noticing it). She cannot present herself to her public (or Joe) like this! She she takes them off, adjusts herself, and continues on with the scene.
But enough about all that, because according to Nathaniel we aren't allowed to pick the last shot as the film's Best Shot. And I toyed with making that mirror shot the best, but it will have to settle for runner-up status this time around.
Each time we watch a movie it becomes a little different; different circumstances in our lives cause our sympathies to bounce around between characters, another plotline or detail of set design attracts our attention, etc. This time I had to pause the film during the New Year's Eve party Norma throws for herself and Joe, so when I came back and started the film up again, I was paying closer attention than on previous viewings. And as Joe storms out of the house, this happens.
BEST SHOT
A little insignificant detail, but Joe's watch chain getting caught in the door, I realized, is a perfectly sly way of setting up the end of the film. He's already too attached to Norma and her gifts. He's tangled up in her life, and there's no getting out now. He won't even get out for long that night, as Norma's suicide attempt brings him running right back. It's reiterating what we know from the prologue - that poor Joe is a dead man - but it's a clever, surprising way of doing so. I don't know whether this happened by accident or not, but either way, it's what makes Billy Wilder one of the greats.
* * *
...AND now that that's done, I'm just going to leave this here, without commentary, just because.
