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!
This week, on Thursday Movie Picks! Up, up, up to incredible heights! The heights of skyscrapers!
I really have nothing much more to say about tall buildings so.... let's just get right to it.
The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin, 1974) An attempt to recreate the "success" of producer Irwin B. Allen's previous hit The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno pretty much succeeds at that goal, offering more explosions, more stars, and... well... more of pretty much everything. If it's not quite as entertaining as Poseidon, well, that's because it perhaps follows that film's template a bit too closely. But it's still one of the best - and certainly the starriest - of the '70s big-budget all-star disaster epics.
Sleepless in Seattle (Nora Ephron, 1993) Consider this me cheating a little, because I'm kinda getting two in one, one of which I haven't seen. You see, Meg Ryan's Annie Reed gets the idea to meet a man she has never met, only heard on talk radio, on the top of the Empire State Building, from the classic An Affair to Remember, a film which I am ashamed to say I haven't seen. But this one, I have, and it is such a delight. They just don't make great romantic comedies like this anymore, with enchanting leads (this is the second of three pairings of Hanks and Ryan, and easily their best), genuine conflict, and terrific, relatable supporting characters (Rosie O'Donnell is just the best, isn't she?). God bless Nora Eprhon for this.
Man on Wire (James Marsh, 2008) In 1974, French acrobat Philippe Petit walked on a tightrope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. This is the story of how he accomplished this illegal, but magical, act. It's an amazing story, told through interviews, real footage, and recreated footage in a seamless assemblage that director Marsh makes feel like a thriller of sorts. It's exhilarating, funny, and endlessly entertaining - which you can rarely say for a documentary!
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. You should join in the action by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them - it's easy and fun!
This week on Thursday Movie Picks: THE INTERNET. Meaning, the thing that I'm writing on, and you're reading on at this very moment.
Well, I'm writing now, and you're reading in the future.
Wait. Or you're reading now, and I'm writing in the past?
Is this how time travel starts?
Anyway, there's one very specific movie about the internet that I'm sure everyone will pick this week, because blah blah blah GREATEST MOVIE EVER yadda yadda yadda.... and I just don't feel that way about it, so.... I'm just not going to pick it.
So there.
Unfriended (Leo Gabriadze, 2015) Cyberbullying, meet the found-footage horror film. Unfriended is completely ridiculous, and honestly not all that scary, BUT when watched late at night, with the lights off, on your laptop.... it really does become almost unbearably creepy at points. The premise - a group of friends chatting via Skype become haunted by a malevolent ghost in the machine, possibly their friend who recently committed suicide after an explicit video of her was posted on Facebook - is kind of genius, and if you want an idea of what the youth of today are up to when no one's looking, this is pretty hard to beat. But... a great idea does not make a great movie.
We Steal Secrets (Alex Gibney, 2013) I mean, you COULD bother with Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate, but other than Benedict Cumberbatch.... WHY? Especially when you have the real thing right here? Gibney's incredibly engrossing documentary wades deep in the moral muck surrounding the website WikiLeaks and its divisive founder, Julian Assange. It's fascinating, depressing, and deeply, deeply cynical all at once. An essential film for anyone currently living on planet Earth.
Julie & Julia (Nora Ephron, 2010) OH, the lengths to which I will go in order to NOT pick THAT movie this week, ladies and gentlemen! I know what you're thinking. "This movie isn't about the internet, it's about cooking!" To which I can only say, "Well, yeah, but it's ALSO about BLOGGING about cooking!" I don't know that Julie Powell was the first celebrity blogger, or the first to have her blog lead to a book deal, but Ephron's deliciously entertaining trifle is as much about being a blogger as it is about being a chef, or being a woman, or being an American abroad. And as such, it really feels like the best possible choice for a blogger to pick when picking films about the internet!
Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three films that fit the chosen theme and telling us about them!
This week's theme is... a bit weird. Work Place Movies. I mean, it's not really weird, but when I think of "Work place" as a main descriptor, I usually think of TV sitcoms like Fawlty Towers, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, NewsRadio, etc. But that's just me.
ANYWAY...
I think I picked three good ones this week. They all have something in common. Can you guess what it is?
The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940) This delightful adaptation of a play by Miklos Laszlo is one of Lubitsch's best - and that's saying something! Margaret Sullivan and James Stewart play co-workers at a gift shop in Budapest who kind of can't stand each other on the job... at the same time as they're falling for each other as "lonely hearts" pen pals! Of course, eventually they figure out who each other is, but the journey is really what makes this such a treat. The famed "Lubitsch touch" is in full display in this witty, perfectly-paced film. The cast is pure enjoyment (Frank Morgan as the shop proprietor and Joseph Schildkraut and Inez Courtney as other shopworkers), and it's perfectly staged - for proof, just watch my other picks, which steal scenes wholesale from this original, the ultimate workplace romance.
In The Good Old Summertime (Robert Z. Leonard, 1949) There's very little to improve upon in Shop Around the Corner, so MGM decided to add songs, Technicolor, and Judy Garland. And you know what? It almost works! Nearly as perfectly cast as the original (Buster Keaton, Spring Byington, and S.Z. Sakall fill out the shop staff, now a music shop in turn-of-the-century America), the only slight misstep is Van Johnson, who in some places comes off a bit too creepily cruel as opposed to lovably antagonistic. But nevertheless, the source material is so foolproof that he can't ruin it. Not one of MGM's best musicals, but this is still a very enjoyable film.
You've Got Mail (Nora Ephron, 1998) Leave it to Nora Ephron to update this story to the digital age, substituting chat rooms and email for lonely hearts letters and post office boxes (is this the original catfishing story?). Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks have the best chemistry of any central couple in these three films, but sadly the great supporting cast (which includes Dave Chappelle and Jean Stapleton) is pushed to the sidelines. But that's also a product of the biggest change to the source material: Instead of working in the same shop, our central couple work for competing businesses - she for a lovely independent bookstore, he for a corporate conglomerate - and they're both in relationships with slightly awful people. Of course, the fact that large corporate bookstores like Barnes & Noble are now going out of business as well as small independent shops dates this film even more than the dial-up tones and AOL screens, but Ryan and Hanks make it plenty worth watching.
BONUS PICKS
...okay, fine, those are all really one choice. So here's another just for kicks and giggles.
Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov, 2008) I know a lot of people don't like this movie, but I love it's energy and inventiveness and twisted sense of humor and Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman (and Chris Pratt in a supporting role). We get to follow poor, maladjusted office drone Wesley through two workplaces: his cubicle-filled corporate shithole and his newfound calling as part of a cadre of deadly assassins led by Freeman which includes Jolie's dead-sexy (and just plain deadly) Fox
What Women Want (Nancy Meyers, 2000) This may be underrated because of Mel Gibson's descent into madness/irrelevancy, but its actually a lot of fun. Mel is the king of male-directed T&A advertising, who gets looked over for a promotion in favor of - SHOCKER - a woman (Helen Hunt at her typical intelligent best). And then, he gets shocked by electricity and can hear women's inner thoughts. Hilarity and killer cameos from Marissa Tomei, Loretta Devine, Bette Midler, Sarah Paulson, and Delta Burke & Valerie Perrine (as the only two women to have absolutely no thoughts in their heads) ensue.
