Thursday Movie Picks - Good Remakes

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.

Look, as much as I hate to admit it, every once in a while Hollywood remakes one of its own movies and it's... not... bad. And on rare occasions, it even improves on the original.

Shocking, I know. But true! Granted, it doesn't happen very much these days, but by the sound of it, A Star Is Born, of all things, is at the very least as good as the 30s and 50s versions, and better than the 70s version. I remain skeptical, but perhaps it will indeed join the ranks of these great remakes!

The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956) As Hitch himself said, the original 1934 version with Peter Lorre is "the work of a talented amateur," while this remake "was made by a professional." Granted, the original is very good. But this one has Jimmy Stewart, Doris Day, "Que Sera, Sera", and of course the Albert Hall sequence, one of the best, most thrilling scenes in all of Hitchcock's filmography. Accuse it of being overwrought all you want, but this is one of my favorite Hitchcock films, often because its too much-ness is truly exciting.

The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956) And as long as we're talking about too much-ness, this film pretty much defines it. But in the best possible way. They don't make movies like this anymore, truly epic in every way. Every performance (Charlton Heston! Anne Baxter! Yul Brynner! Yvonne de Carlo! Judith Anderson! John Derek! DeMille himself!) is iconic, and the special effects sequences capture the kind of grandeur that you wouldn't have thought possible in 1956. It may be over three and a half hours long, but it's so entertaining that you don't even notice. DeMille's own silent version of this story is still worth seeing, but it's got nothing on this, one of the biggest spectacles the cinema has ever seen.

Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001) Yeah, sure, The Rat Pack, and all that, but even that classic brand of cool ain't got nothin' on what Soderbergh, Clooney, and Pitt cooked up here. Everything about this remake of Ocean's Eleven feels effortless, from the easy charisma and chemistry of the stars, to the slick cinematography, the playful editing, and most importantly, that iconic jazzy score. This is Hollywood product at its slickest, providing one hell of a good time that you can't replicate anywhere else. It's pure movie magic, with a twist that more than holds up to multiple viewings. Neat trick, that.

Thursday Movie Picks - World War II

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and saying a bit about them! 
A rather big topic for this week's Thursday Movie Picks: Oscar's favorite war, World War II.

I'm generally not a huge fan of war movies, to be honest. But there are some really good ones made with WWII as backdrop, so here we go!

Forbidden Games (René Clément, 1950) The horrors of war, as seen through a child's perspective. This uniquely moving film tells the story of a young girl (Brigitte Fossey, in an incredible performance) whose parents are killed in a air raid while she saves the family dog. When the dog dies as well, she meets a young boy in the countryside, and the two of them start a cemetery for animals, and steal crosses from church cemeteries. Alternately darkly funny and poignant, Forbidden Games is a classic that everyone should see.

The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998) The most beautiful war film ever made. Taking the Battle of Guadalcanal and refracting it through a diverse (ridiculously starry) cast of men of different backgrounds and beliefs, Malick confronts the terrible psychological cost of war in a way that only he can. The result is the best war film of 1998 (I SAID IT), and possibly ever.

Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009) World War II as only Quentin Tarantino could film it, Inglorious Basterds is ridiculously entertaining, and not just in a revenge fantasy way. Each scene is so marvelously constructed (the bar! the movie theater!), and each one is better than the next. Fantastic performances from Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger, and Mélanie Laurent anchor the film, it's Christoph Waltz, as renowned "Jew Hunter" Col. Hans Landa that steals the show, in a flat-out brilliant Oscar-winning performance. It may be too violent for some, but I love every second of this, and agree with the famous last line: "This may just be my [read: Tarantino's] masterpiece."

Thursday Movie Picks - Con Artists

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three films that fit the week's theme and telling us about them!

Ready, steady, GO: Con Artists

...

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

...

Sorry, I'm still in a turkey coma from last week. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and I had two celebrations, one on Thursday and one on Friday. This was my first year traveling to celebrate the holiday since college. And I was also cooking. So I missed last week's Thursday movie picks. :-(

So I wanted to be back this week with a vengeance.

Except that I forgot today was Thursday.

DAMMIT.

Oh well. I shall soldier on anyway! I've got one modern classic, and two Classic classics.

Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001) Effortlessly cool and with enough movie star charisma and swagger for eleven films, Soderbergh's update of the classic Rat Pack film is pure, endlessly rewatchable movie fun.

The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) Barbara Stanwyck's seduction of Henry Fonda's dim-witted mark is one for the ages.

Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1933) Only Lubitsch could make a con film this sophisticated, sexy, and funny. Indelible performances from conwoman Miriam Hopkins and single socialite Kay Francis, as well as suave Hubert Marshall, the man caught between them.

Thursday Movie Picks - Journalists/Reporters for Print/TV

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them!

Is it really Thursday again already? It feels like just yesterday that we were talking about movies on trains. And this week, the theme is journalists/reporters. Ah, the intrepid reporter bungling their way to a career-making story with nothing but pluck, gumption, and a notepad - one of my favorite movie plots! I could have gone classic this week (if you haven't seen His Girl Friday, DO IT. Rosalind Russell is tremendous in it), but I did that last week, so contemporary films were in order. Here we have, for your viewing enjoyment, two fictional journalists who got more than what they bargained for, and one real-life newsman who was much more than his opponents bargained for.

Never Been Kissed (Raja Gosnell, 1999) Josie Geller, played by a radiant Drew Barrymore, starts out as a copy editor, but then one day the Editor-in-Chief of the paper she works for gives her a "real" assignment: go undercover in a high school to report on what teenagers' lives are really like. Of course, Josie had a terrible time when she was in high school (she was nicknamed "Josie Grossy") and wants to succeed this time around. Except that she still has the same temperament she had in high school, and teens haven't changed that much in the intervening years. So then her popular younger brother (David Arquette) goes back to school too, and everyone learns that high school - even one attended by 30 year-olds - is hell, and outer appearances don't always match the inner person. It's all cliché, yes, but Barrymore is impossibly winning, and the ensemble cast (including Michael Vartan, Jessica Alba, Leelee Sobieski, Molly Shannon, John C. Reilly, James Franco, and Garry Marshall in a great cameo as the Editor-in-Chief) is very fun.

The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002) Intrepid journalist Rachel Keller is concerned about her son, who has apparently been drawing morbid pictures of his cousin Katie's death.... even before it happened. Being an intrepid journalist, she naturally decides to investigate the mysterious death of her niece. Which of course includes watching this weird-ass videotape she watched in a cabin with friends. A videotape straight out of urban legend. One that causes you to die seven days after you watch it. But Rachel finds out that the legend is all too real. And of course she bumbles her way around trying to get to the bottom of how such a tape came into existence. Both The Ring and the original Japanese film Ringu, on which it is based, have a concept that has horror built right in; the plot itself suggests that the very act of watching the film will kill you. It doesn't get much scarier than that. But Verbinski's film has a sturdier sense of mood than Hideo Nakata's original, and a great performance from Naomi Watts at its center.

Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, 2005) Nightly News anchorman Edward R. Murrow and his team go to battle with Senator Joseph McCarthy, who is on a Communist witch hunt in 1950s America. Clooney's film so ably and completely captures not just the look but the feel of the 50s in every aspect of the production. And while the entire ensemble cast deserves praise, it's character actor David Strathairn, as Murrow, who has the biggest part, and boy does he run with the opportunity, giving a performance that transcends mere mimicry to stand on its own as a performance of solid, deep power. Clooney (whose passion project this was; his father was a TV newsman) couldn't have asked for a better actor to carry this exciting, well-made, important film.