Thursday Movie Picks - Romantic Comedies

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.

Thursday Movie Picks - Political Comedy

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!

After the past few years of American politics, we all need a good political comedy, even though they may be just as painful to watch as dramas. But even when what's happening on screen is eerily, uncomfortably close to what's happening in real life, laughter is the best kind of catharsis. These are three of my favorites.

In The Loop (Armando Iannucci, 2009) This satire of the run-up to the Iraq war, a spin-off of the brilliant British TV series The Thick of It is one of the funniest films ever made. When Minister for International Development Simon Foster (terrifically bumbling Tom Hollander) keeps digging a deeper hole for himself every time he opens his mouth around the media, the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, Malcolm Tucker (the shoulda-been-Oscar-nominated Peter Capaldi) is sent in to fix things. Except that American Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomacy Karen Clark (hilarious Mimi Kennedy) got wind of Foster's statements and wants him to help her as she tries to undermine Assistant Secretary of State for Policy Linton Barwick's secret war committee. It's all a tangle, and a flawless ensemble of American and British actors pull it off, giving Iannucci fantastically profane script (Malcolm's preferred sign-off phrase is "Fuckity-bye!") plenty of punch.

The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940) For his first true sound film, Charlie Chaplin sure went there, didn't he? A Jewish barber just so happens to look exactly like the ruthless dictator Adenoid Hynkel (who may look rather... familiar to you), and when Hynkel orders a purge of the Jews, it may be up to the barber to save his people... and the rest of the people of the country of Tomania. One of the most important works of satire ever filmed, The Great Dictator is brilliant, and brilliantly funny.

Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933) The Marx Brothers at their zany best, which is actually what makes this satire somewhat difficult to watch. They are talking about political intrigue and war, after all. But really, the hilariously on point songs and the justly famous mirror scene put Zeppo's final film with the group over the top.

Thursday Movie Picks - A Fresh Start

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, we've all been there. Those days when everything is falling apart, or has grown stale beyond belief, or when a chapter of your life has just... ended. So you move on, you move out, and you hopefully move up in the world. It's not always easy, but sometimes you just have to do it. Just like characters do in these movies.

Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) Mildred's husband is a louse - she provides more financial support for the family by baking pies and cakes, and he has a woman on the side. So she kicks him out, but has to find a way to support her two daughters on her own. In order to do that, she takes a job as a waitress, with the goal of one day opening up her own restaurant. Which she finally does... while failing to realize that she's unwittingly raised her daughter Veda into a snobbish bitch who doesn't appreciate any of her mother's hard work. One of the key works of the Old Hollywood Studio System, and the role that famously won Joan Crawford her Oscar.

Bridget Jones's Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001) Bridget Jones is a 32 year-old "singleton" living and working in London, and has decided that she's heard one too many behind-her-back remarks about her appearance and personality. So she decides to make an active change in her life, and starts keeping a diary. She vows to quit smoking, lose weight... and stop fantasizing about her boss, the handsome womanizer Daniel Cleaver. Some of those things actually work out. This endearing adaptation of the popular novel earned Renée Zellweger a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her leading performance as the singularly British Bridget, and Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are well-matched as her love interests.

Wild (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2014) Cheryl Strayed has lost her mother and ended her marriage. She's lived recklessly and self-destructively for too long. Finally, she makes a somewhat rash decision: She's going to hike over a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail. Alone. One of the most powerful films about spiritual reawakening and the power of memory I've ever seen, anchored by a never-better (and Oscar-nominated) Reese Witherspoon. All the better for the fact that it's based on a true story.

Thursday Movie Picks - Break Into Song Scenes

Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the blogging fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!

As you know, I LOVE musicals. But this week isn't about that. This week for Thursday Movie Picks, we are talking about non-musicals that nonetheless have a scene (or two) where characters break into song. Such scenes can certainly liven up the proceedings, being that these scenes tend to do the same things that musical numbers in musicals do, giving us an insight into these characters that we wouldn't otherwise get if they didn't have the musical outlet.

Key Largo (John Huston, 1948) One of the greatest ensemble casts ever assembled (Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Claire Trevor) get stuck in a hotel lobby during a hurricane on the titular island. Bogart is there to pay his respects to a WWII comrade's widow (Bacall, naturally), but before long, Robinson and his thugs get into a bit of a situation with some local on-the-run criminals and take control of the hotel. The scene in question is a stunner, as Trevor's Gaye Dawn is manipulated by her lover (Robinson, naturally) to perform one of her cabaret numbers for the group. It's a stunning scene, one that more than earned Trevor her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. The movie itself is a great exercise in escalating tension, if one of the lesser Bogart/Bacall pairings.

Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999) PTA's kaleidoscopic look at the lives of all kinds of people in the San Fernando Valley does the "interconnecting stories" thing much better than most other films (including the similar, ham-fisted Oscar winner Crash), and is absolutely mesmerizing in its best moments. The very best of which is the sequence when nearly all of the film's characters (and there are a LOT of them) start separately singing Aimee Mann's beautiful "Wise Up" as the song plays on the soundtrack. It's a stunning moment, which makes it all the sadder that Anderson had to go and gild the lily with the movie's ridiculous ending, which looks for all the world like he wrote himself into a corner, chose the most ridiculous deus ex machina he could think of, and added the movie's opening sequence to justify it. But that's just me, and I really do love the rest of Magnolia something fierce - the performances alone are worth the price of admission (Tom Cruise deserved the Oscar for his balls-to-the-wall performance as professional male chauvinist Frank T.J. Mackey), and even though it's long, it's consistently involving. It's just a pity about that ending.

The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro, 2017) I don't want to spoil it, because it came to me as an utter surprise in the movie, and it's maybe my favorite scene in any movie of 2017. Using the old standard "You'll Never Know" was a stroke of genius, and del Toro manages to turn it into the most magical moment in a movie full to bursting with movie magic. Elisa is a mute cleaning woman at a secret government facility in 1960s Baltimore. When an amphibious humanoid "asset" is brought to the facility, Elisa finds it a kindred spirit, and when she learns it is going to be killed, she takes it upon herself (and her gay artist neighbor) to rescue it. A gorgeous piece of work on every level, The Shape of Water was nominated for more Oscars than any other movie this year, and I'm pulling for it to win most of them, and wouldn't be upset if it pulled off a sweep.

Thursday Movie Picks - The Stage

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us, leave your field to flower - just pick three movies that fit the week's theme and write a bit about them!

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts
  -William Shakespeare, As You Like It, II.vii

It's true, and in my time I have played many parts. Ever since I was an infant, I loved putting on a show for people. I would climb up on top of chairs or stools and perform, even before I could speak intelligibly, if my mother is to be believed. I didn't REALLY get into theater until middle school, right around the time I first saw Singin' in the Rain and told my Mom that I wanted to be Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor, prompting her to sign me up for tap dancing lessons. Suddenly, I was a triple threat - good singer, good dancer, good actor - and got cast in shows I auditioned for outside of school plays. My love affair with the stage continues to this day, even though my last stage performance (playing Professor Bhaer in the musical version of Little Women, and making my mother cry) was in February of 2014. Living in NYC means an abundance of professional theater but a scarcity of truly amateur opportunities - everyone's trying to make it here - so I haven't tried. But once you're bitten by the bug, the itch to perform on stage in front of an audience never really goes away, and I'll be back performing soon. Just you wait.

These are three of my favorite movies about life on the stage (minus Shakespeare in Love, which I've picked for these things WAY too many times, and Birdman, which I expect will be picked a lot today).

 

To Be Or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942/Alan Johnson, 1983) Pick your flavor, the elegant Lubitsch touch or the Brooks-ian Borscht Belt. To my mind, they're both great. The story in both versions is the same: A husband and wife team are stars of the Warsaw theater scene of 1939 (Jack Benny/Mel Brooks and Carole Lombard/Anne Bancroft). Every night while the husband is performing Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be..." speech, a young Lieutenant pilot (Robert Stack/Tim Matheson) leaves the audience... to go backstage to romance the wife! She keeps seeing him because she likes the attention, but has no intention of actually leaving her husband. Eventually, the Nazis invade and our intrepid young Lieutenant becomes aware of a spy in the ranks. Mistaken identities, cross purposes, and lots and LOTS of hilarious scenes ensue as the theater troupe works together to fight the Nazis in whatever way they can. The plot is WAY too complicated to attempt to explain here, but in both versions it provides for ample comedy of all kinds, and tremendous performances from the stars. Since each version is essentially the same story tailored to the talents of its stars, they're just different enough to be good in their own way. I honestly can't choose which one I prefer. All I can say is they're both hilarious and worth a watch, especially in the current moment.

The Last Metro (Francois Truffaut, 1980) During the Nazi occupation of Paris, a Gentile actress (Catherine Deneuve) struggles to keep her Jewish husband (Heinz Bennent) hidden in the theater's basement, while both acting and directing (for him) a new play. Gerard Depardieu plays the leading actor in the play, who is also a member of the resistance. The title refers to the last train of the evening, which all Parisians had to catch because of a Nazi curfew. Like many of Truffaut's films, there's a lot here that's a bit dull, but the moments when it comes alive are truly thrilling, and the combined star power of French Cinema Gods Deneuve and Depardieu is just amazing to watch. As with all of Truffaut's best films, this feels personal, and it was: Both his father and uncle were members of the French resistance, and were once caught passing messages (a scene he recreated in this film - one of its best sequences).

Being Julia (Istvan Szabo, 2004) Julia Lambert is the greatest stage actress of her day. But being a woman of a certain age, she is starting to be pushed out for younger, prettier actresses. An affair with a  young American reinvigorates her lust for life, but when she realizes he is using her to advance his career and social standing AND ALSO sleeping with a rival ingenue, Julia begins to plot her revenge. Annette Bening is delicious as Julia, tearing into the juicy part with the energy of a hungry lioness, and she receives great support from Jeremy Irons, Michael Gambon, Juliet Stevenson, and especially Lucy Punch as her rival. I could watch the scene where Julia hijacks the play to get revenge on Avice on a loop forever and be perfectly satisfied.

Mt. Rushmore of Movies Blogathon

SOOOOOOOO.... I saw these posts on Dell on Movies and Rambling Film and I thought to myself "Mt. Rushmore? OF MOVIES?? I MUST WRITE!" And then I realized I had only a day to decide on a topic and pick the ultimate FOREVER four. And such things are usually NOT easy.

But then I realized I had one. THE one. The one where I could pick the absolute indisputable four for ever and ever of all time to be carved in stone and displayed for the masses. So here we go:

THE MT. RUSHMORE OF MOVIES WHERE

THE ROMANTIC LEADS DON'T END UP TOGETHER

(aka, The Great Three-Hankie Weepies)

Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) That entire last scene at the airport is just beyond perfect: "...the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Here's looking at you kid." ...AND CUE TEARS.

Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945) How cruel that these two don't even get a proper goodbye: "I must go." "Yes you must," and his hand on her shoulder. CURSE YOU, Dolly Messiter and your awful timing!

Shakespeare in Love (John Madden, 1998) Another absolutely perfect final scene: "You will never age for me, nor fade, nor die." "Write me well." And she lives on, as his heroine for all time. Glorious.

In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000) This one hurts differently than the others. This one hurts after our two lovers have taken their leave, as he whispers his secret love into a hole, covers it with mud, and leaves it there, never to be shared or spoken of again.

...no, YOU'RE crying! I just have a piece of grit in my eye...

Thursday Movie Picks - Addiction

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.

Thursday Movie Picks - World War I

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. If you don't know the deal by now, welcome! And why if you do, then come on in and join us! The water's fine!

Busybusybusy this week.

Let's do this quick and dirty style.

All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930) Still one of the greatest Oscar Best Picture winners, over 80 years later.

Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941) The beginning of my love affair with Gary Cooper.

A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004) Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Jodie Foster (speaking French), a very young Marion Cotillard, and Oscar-nominated cinematography. What more could you ask for?

Thursday Movie Picks - Single Location Movies

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. We're always here, every Thursday, picking three movies that fit the week's theme - join us! The water's fine!

People talk a lot about the need to "open up" plays when they transfer to the big screen, their thinking being that because a film does not have to be confined to one set and can go anywhere, audiences do not want to sit for a couple of hours and watch something that takes place in only one location, unlike in the theatre, where you are somewhat bound by the constraints of the stage.

The following films, my picks for this week, are just three examples of films that put the lie to this idea. All that matters is that the film is made well, no matter where it takes place.

Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948) I could just as easily have made these picks only Alfred Hitchcock movies, but I decided against it. I've talked about him a lot recently. Rope isn't one of his best movies, but it's an interesting experiment that works more often than it doesn't. Famously ironing almost all the gay out of the stage play based on the Leopold & Loeb murder case (memorably brought to the screen several times, by lesser filmmakers than Hitchcock, but both Compulsion and Swoon have things to recommend them) and filming the whole thing so that it looks like it was done in one take, Hitchcock succeeds at the very least in putting us in the middle of the action of a stage play that also happens to be a locked-room murder mystery. In it's best moments, it's thrilling, but there's too much philosophizing from Jimmy Stewart, playing a character whose darker side he can't ably portray yet, and thus it drags for long stretches. But don't get me wrong: Mediocre Hitchcock is still better than the best films of many other directors!

Wait Until Dark (Terence Young, 1967) Now THIS is how you do a single-room thriller. Audrey Hepburn, Oscar-nominated for one of her best performances, is Suzy, a blind woman living in a basement apartment. Her husband has just returned from a trip, bringing with him a doll, taken as a favor to a woman he met at the airport. Unbeknownst to them, the doll is full of drugs, and some very bad men soon come to the apartment looking for them. What follows is one of the most tense, edge-of-your-seat, dig-your-nails-into-your-armrest-or-companion movies ever made, as Suzy must match wits against Alan Arkin's evil head baddie.

Carnage (Roman Polanski, 2011) Oh, dear lord, this one. Look, Polanski is very damn close to the top of his game here, but I will never for the life of me understand why they didn't just go with the original Broadway cast (Marcia Gay Harden, James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, and Hope Davis) instead of the cast they did, nearly all of whom are miscast and most of whom don't really pull it off. Don't get me wrong, for the most part Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz, and Kate Winslet are good, but.... when they're not, they're AWFUL. The story couldn't be any more basic: Two sets of parents meet to have a civil discussion about an incident where one of their kids attacked the other at school, and slowly things start to devolve until the adults end up acting just as much like children as their kids. But Polanski finds every possible angle from which to shoot in this cramped apartment, maximizing the set like no other.

Thursday Movie Picks - Store/Supermarket/Mall Movies

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them, so we can choose our weekend viewing!

Yes, it's true! This week Thursday Movie Picks is going to the mall! Or, you know, a record store. Or grocery store. Or book store. Or department store. You know. A place where you go to buy things.

I have to admit, all those movies and more crossed my mind, but I had either used them before, or they had maybe one or two scenes that fit, which is really not enough in my mind. So it was difficult picking these, but here we are! And I'm pretty happy with these three. I hope you like them, too!

High Fidelity (Stephen Frears, 2000) Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: The book by Nick Hornby is one of my All-Time favorites. The movie isn't. But as far as adaptations go, I gotta say this one is pretty dynamite. John Cusack works in a record store with Jack Black and Todd Louiso, and together they form a sort of all-knowing trio of too-cool-for-school music snobs, constantly rating things in Top Five lists. Cusack's Rob is finally in a relationship he thinks will stick, except that she meets someone else, and he spirals into a funk trying to figure out his life, even to the point of looking up his exes to find out where those relationships went wrong, and if maybe possibly he could get them back. All of this sounds insufferable, and to be fair, if you can't stand Cusack (or Jack Black, perfectly cast as he may be) it might be. But I found this to be far funnier and more delightful to watch than I ever could have possibly imagined.

Miracle on 34th Street (George Seaton, 1947) This is the one. The best Christmas movie ever. Says me. Who does not celebrate Christmas. At the very least, it is the most American Christmas movie ever made, interrogating (however lightly) our consumerist culture and what we truly think the "Spirit of Christmas" is. Is Edmund Gwenn's Kris Kringle really Santa Claus? Does it even matter? Everything about this movie is just charming, from Gwenn's infectious smile, to Natalie Wood's early onset teen angst, to Maureen O'Hara's gradual opening up to joy. Both the joy of Christmas and the joy of buying things at Macy's. Aw, I joke because I love! Also: This is one of my favorite trailers EVER. I mean, they don't even use more than 5 seconds of footage from the film! Not even a HINT of what it's about! BRILLIANT.

Chocolat (Lasse Hallström, 2000) This may be stretching the theme a bit, but Juliette Binoche's Vianne Rocher does open a shop where she sells chocolate (in a town, of course, that is overly pious and sees sweets, ESPECIALLY that lustful, sinful chocolate, as the devil's food). And also, this deserves a re-evaluation by people who think little of it because it (undeservedly) received a whole lot of Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. I'll freely admit that it's not THAT good, but it has its pleasures, not the least of which are Binoche and Judi Dench's performances as the earthy, sensuous Vianne and the local old crone, respectively. It's simple, but very sweet, not unlike most really good chocolate.

Thursday Movie Picks - Immortals

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Take part in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them - couldn't be easier!

What an interesting, tantalizingly vague topic for this week's Thursday Movie Picks! Immortals, huh? Like, gods? Or vampires? Or legends, who may die but will live forever in other ways?

Somehow, I managed to not quite go down any of those routes. Although I had initially wanted to be very cheeky and pick three movies with legendary actors playing legendary people (like, say, Lincoln, Amadeus, and Ali... not that it necessarily would have been those three exactly, but you get the idea), I decided against it because somehow, it just didn't feel quite right somehow. But still, I think these three fit the bill for this week quite nicely.

Death Becomes Her (Robert Zemeckis, 1992) What would you do if you had the opportunity to remain young forever, WITHOUT becoming a vampire? I don't know about you, but of the many, MANY things I would do, fight with my best frenemy about a wimpy, mustachioed Bruce Willis is not one of them. Oh, I kid, I kid. Willis is actually damn funny in this, as the man torn between Meryl Streep's actress Madeline Ashton and Goldie Hawn's author, both of whom have taken a potion provided by Isabella Rossellini (who else?) that provides eternal youth. This zany camp classic has aged remarkably well, and I'm not just talking about the groundbreaking visual effects. This gets to the heart of the love-hate relationships between women better than perhaps any other movie released in the modern era. It's also perfectly cast from top to bottom.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin, 1945) Oscar Wilde's immortal story of a young man so beautiful that his portrait takes on all the rot of age and moral decay for him is far more tantalizing to read than to watch, but even this early filming of the tale gets at the horror of the story in ways the book does not. Hurd Hatfield is a perfect Dorian Gray, and Angela Lansbury is lovely as the gutter girl Sibyl Vane who may have stood a chance at stealing his heart, if it hadn't already turned black as pitch. Plus, the horrifying ending really exploits everything you can do with film, as pure a coup de cinéma as has ever existed.

Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988) What? I had to throw in something remotely off-center! You can't deny that the "ghost with the most" isn't immortal - he's been around for over 600 years, and given the number on his ticket in the waiting room final scene, he's going to be around for a whole lot longer than that! So what if he's technically part of the after-life? He is living there, after all! Michael Keaton's performance as the titular "bio-exorcist" (a ghost who gets rid of the living) is one of the greatest comedic performances of all time, a hyper-committed work of near-insanity that creates a wholly original character out of nothing. There's nothing else like it. And come to think of it, there's nothing really like this movie, either. It's the ultimate horror-comedy, deliciously designed, perfectly cast (really, AMPAS, you couldn't find room at the Oscars for ONE of the film's magnificent Supporting Actresses?!?), and undoubtedly the work of an utterly singular director. It's a pity what Tim Burton has become over the past decade. The likelihood of getting something as fun as this from him again is LOW.

Thursday Movie Picks - Love Triangles

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 a bit about them!

Ah, the love triangle. The time-honored tradition of two men going after the same woman... or one woman falling for two different guys at the same time (yeah, it usually doesn't go the other way around). It is a situation fraught with tension. Or, at least, it can be. I can only imagine how frustrating this must be in real life, but in movies it can sometimes be fun.

The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940) I suppose you COULD call this a "love square" since Katharine Hepburn's Tracy Lord has three suitors.... except that the third man (John Howard's poor George) is really never part of the "love" part of the equation. Tracy divorced C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) for his alcoholism, and now she's set to marry the respectable and utterly boring George, who worships her. But then undercover newspaper reporter Mike Connor (Jimmy Stewart) shows up and sparks fly as friendly competition picks up between all three of them (this is Kate Hepburn we're talking about, after all). Everyone knows she isn't going to end up marrying George (poor, poor George), but will she fall back in love with (read: realize she never fell out of love with) Dexter, or will she fall hard enough for the stalwart Mike? The three leads could not have been more perfectly cast (except perhaps for the two men Hepburn originally wanted, Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy - of course), and despite the manic plot the whole thing is fleet-footed in that way that only comedies of the 1930s and 40s are.

Victor/Victoria (Blake Edwards, 1982) Alright, now pay attention, this one's kinda complicated. Out of work opera singer Victoria Grant (Julie Andrews) is broke and starving in Paris when she runs into Carroll Todd (Robert Preston). Together, they hatch a plan to become the toast of the town: Victoria will play the role of Victor, a female impersonator. She sings as herself, then at the end of the act, rips off her "wig" to "reveal" herself as a man! Because Julie Andrews is SO BUTCH! But then Chicago club owner King Marchand (James Garner) and his girlfriend Norma (Lesley Ann Warren, the REAL star of this movie) show up, and King falls in lust/love with Victor. I mean, Victoria. Because he's absolutely positive that there's no way she's really a man (probably because he's an American. I mean, what do the French know, right?). But Norma is convinced her beau is falling for a man, because she may be a ditz, but she's not completely.... well, no, really, she is completely dumb. But now King is caught in the middle, between a crazy dumb chick and a woman playing a man playing a woman. A lot of the very smart things Victor/Victoria has to say about gender, sexuality, love, and attraction are undercut somewhat by the fact that "Victor" really doesn't exist, but to be honest, that doesn't really matter, because Blake Edwards is in top form here, perfectly staging every single scene in this gag-filled movie musical. And the music by Henry Mancini is pretty damn great, too. Come for Julie's iconic "Le Jazz Hot", stay for the beautiful, hugely effective ballad "Crazy World". And then there's Lesley Ann Warren, doing the greatest dumb blonde routine this side of Jean Hagen in Singin' in the Rain.

3 (Tom Tykwer, 2011) What if a couple in a long-term relationship fell, independently of each other, for the same man? That is the question posed by Tom Tykwer's film, and it's a totally contemporary, worthy question. And the best part is, most "love triangles" are really Vs, with one person attracted to two others at the same time. But here, that third line gets filled in, creating a TRUE love triangle. It's a fascinating film, kind of like Tykwer's breakthrough Run Lola Run without the action sequences, but with all that energy turned into sex/sexiness.

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 - Ghost Movies

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

This week, Halloween week, we are picking Ghost Movies. There are really two kinds of ghost movies - scary and sweet. And so, I have picked two from each. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two older movies are sweet and the two newer films are scary.

I should also say that I saw Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak this weekend, and...... I was underwhelmed. I get that, in the end, it's less of a ghost story than "a story with a ghost in it" to use the film's own language, but it didn't go far enough into the gothic grandeur and melodrama for me. Disappointing, despite some absolutely fantastic elements.

The Canterville Ghost (Jules Dassin, 1944) Cowardly Sir Simon of Canterville has been cursed to haunt his family castle until one of the family's descendants performs a brave deed while wearing his signet ring. You see, he ran away from a duel and his father would NOT have him besmirch the Canterville name by being a coward. Three centuries pass full of cowardly Cantervilles, but when a soldier in a battalion stationed in Canterville Castle appears to have the Canterville birthmark, the portly Simon thinks he's finally found the one to break the curse. Based on a story by Oscar Wilde and starring Charles Laughton as Sir Simon and Margaret O'Brien as his youngest descendant, Jessica, The Canterville Ghost is all sorts of fun.

The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Makiewicz, 1947) Young widow Lucy Muir (a luminous Gene Tierney) finally decides to strike out on her own and live with her daughter in a cottage by the sea. She was warned against it, but moves in anyway... only to find out that the place is haunted by its previous owner, the salty sea captain Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison, playing Rex Harrison as only he can). Their relationship starts off antagonistic, but soon cools into a mutual respect and then warms into.... can it be? YES!... love. With Natalie Wood as the Muir daughter Anna and George Sanders as the living part of the supernatural love triangle that inevitably forms, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is one of my favorite romances, and couldn't be more different from the classic TV sitcom it inspired.

The Others (Alejandro Amenábar, 2001) It is not long after World War II on the fog-flooded island of Jersey off the coast of England. Grace (Nicole Kidman in what is probably her best performance) has been living with her two children - who suffer from a rare disease characterized by "photosensitivity"; they could die if exposed to natural light - in a large house while her husband is away at war. Thankfully, three new servants have shown up to help her and the children. And just in time, too, as her daughter has been seeing a family of ghosts in the house and windows and doors have been flinging open by themselves. The Others is a masterpiece of restraint and mood, and also genuinely scary in moments. Even after you know all the story's twists and turns, the film is still a marvel to behold. And its final shot is one of the new millennium's most chilling, haunting images

The Conjuring (James Wan, 2014) Based on a true story from renowned paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, The Conjuring is the best scary movie to hit theaters in quite some time, and it achieves that by taking horror back to basics: long takes, deep focus, a respect for craft, and care for its characters. The Perron family (led by Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston, perfectly ordinary empathetic) moves into a fixer-upper in 1971, and not long after moving in start to experience supernatural happenings. In fear and desperation, they turn to the Warrens (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, both fantastic), who confirm that the house is indeed haunted. By some mightily pissed off spirits. The letter-perfect period trappings contribute to the throwback feel of the film, but what really elevates The Conjuring above most horror films of the modern day is its structure: The film does not work unless you feel for the characters, and the early scenes make us feel like part of the Perron family. When things finally go south, it's not just horrifying, it's heartrending, because we feel for these characters, just like poor innocent Regan in The Exorcist and Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby.

Thursday Movie Picks - Werewolves

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us - I promise we won't bite - by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them.

Quick and dirty this week, as I haven't really seen many films involving werewolves.

The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941) What's most surprising about this Universal monster movie is that the titular beastie doesn't really appear for much of it. But Claude Rains and Lon Chaney, Jr. give the film the gravitas it needs to work on a level deeper than the script displays on the surface.

Teen Wolf (Rod Daniel, 1985) An essential piece of '80s pop culture, this undeniably fun Michael J. Fox-starrer works much better as a teen flick than a horror, even a horror-comedy, film.

Cat People (Val Lewton, 1942) Val Lewton was the king of doing a lot with a little, and Cat People is a perfect example of that (so much so that I'm not entirely sure it really fits this week's theme). We never see the mysterious monster stalking poor Simone Simon, but this is the genesis of that old horror trope "the person walking alone at night who hears something walking behind them that stops when they stop," and damn if it isn't effective.

Blind Spot #5: The Third Man

Yes, I know, I have slacked terribly on this project. I've just been busier than I thought I would be and found myself wanting to do other things with my free time than watching movies (WHAT?!?!? BLASPHEMY!!!!). But then I saw that Carol Reed's The Third Man was playing at Film Forum, and I pretty much had to go. And I'm so glad I did, since the film was completely surprising in that it was not what I expected at all.

I've always heard The Third Man talked about as one of the greatest noir films. It may be, but it's a far far funnier film than I ever associated with the genre, which is defined by pitch-black films like Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice. The Third Man, while it has the necessary canted angles and deep shadows, simply doesn't FEEL like a noir. It's not even black comedy. Instead,  it's practically satire.

The downright jaunty zither score that opens the film is the first clue that this isn't going to be a dark twisty thriller. The second is Joseph Cotten, who isn't just playing a bumbling American in Austria - he's playing THE bumbling American (and it's a terrific performance as that). Sticking his nose in not just where it doesn't belong, but where it is neither needed nor wanted, Holly Martins is an author of cheap paperbacks with titles like The Lone Rider of Santa Fe, and he plays that Western bully personality to the hilt, asking questions and butting in on international affairs because his best friend, Harry Lime, just couldn't POSSIBLY be the horrid racketeer this British officer says he is. Never mind that Lime died just before Martins arrived in Austria on his friend's invitation, Martins is going to prove everyone wrong.

Of course, if the canted angles were our first clue that something is rotten in the state of Austria, the second would be the name of Orson Welles in the credits. I don't know that the film necessarily plays differently knowing that Welles is playing Harry Lime, but I suspect that people would be on the lookout for him even if they didn't know, and with the amount of time spent talking about Lime, it's probably pretty clear that the man is nowhere near dead. Welles has said that all he had to do to play the part was to just show up, since the script does such a great job of building up Lime as a character, but I would disagree. The part cries out for someone like Welles; someone with a larger-than-life presence and a rather arch way of delivering a line. I mean, look at that face up above. That's when Lime makes his first appearance in the film, letting Martins know he's quite alive thank you very much, but not saying a single word. Very few actors could pull off a shot like that, and Welles is at the very top of that list.

But, as the reviews have said, the real star of the show is that climactic chase through the sewers, which boasts some of the greatest noir cinematography ever. It's not surprising that the film is labeled as noir when it includes shots like the one of Welles above, or like this one:

I mean, that is fucking GORGEOUS. And it's taking place in a sewer (well, not really. Apparently Welles refused to shoot any scenes in a sewer, so he shot his stuff on soundstages. But still...). Never has a drainage repository ever looked so beautiful.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Third Man. It is a film full of unexpected pleasures, from Trevor Howard's perfectly dry British colonel, to the hilariously sharp script by Graham Greene, to the great performances by Cotten and Welles, to that justly famed cinematography. It's rare that a film with such a reputation as this one has can actually surprise you, but that's exactly what this great film did.

...although it did take me a whole week to get that damn zither score out of my head!

The Third Man
Year: 1949
Directed by: Carol Reed
Screenplay by: Graham Greene
Starring: Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, (Alida) Valli
Oscar: 1 WIN - Best Cinematography (Black & White). Nominations for Director (Reed lost to Joseph L. Mankiewicz for All About Eve) and Editing (lost to King Solomon's Mines)
Rating: ****

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - The Red Shoes

Look, I'll just come right out and say it: I don't know how to talk about Powell & Pressburger's The Red Shoes. Whenever I try, I'm suddenly utterly incapable of forming words, let alone coherent sentences. It is one of the most beautiful films ever made, and its influence can be felt far and wide, in films as different as Raging Bull and Center Stage. It is a landmark film for many reasons, but when it comes the how it films dance, it is so brilliant that all I can do is sigh. The only way to explain it is to see it. Words cannot do it justice. This is one film where the old "a picture is worth a thousand words" maxim comes into play, for I do not think enough words could possibly be written about this film, which flashes 24 pictures of pure Technicolor perfection at you per second for 133 minutes (how on God's green Earth did Jack Cardiff not get an Oscar nomination for his cinematography here?!?!?).

I mean, take this shot from the ballet sequence (all dance on film begins and ends here. There is no topping this. Everyone should just stop trying):

Even in terrible quality, it's gorgeous. You know the story of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, right? Basically, girl puts on pretty pair of red shoes, cannot stop dancing, dies. Everything about this shot is so perfectly ethereal - as Moira Shearer's Victoria Page dances her part in the ballet, she keeps going even as the other fair-goers around her drop from exhaustion. Even the posters fall down. But our heroine keeps dancing. On and on. And on and on. And the colors. THE COLORS. Good GOD but they are wondrous.

The brilliant thing about The Red Shoes the film is how it parallels the fairy tale story. Victoria Page cannot stop dancing. Not for the love of her life. Not for anyone or anything. When Lermontov, the director of the ballet, asks her why she wants to dance, she gives the only response:

"Why do you want to live?"

Lermontov answers, of course, that he simply must, but it's a rhetorical question. To dance, for Vicky, is to live. There isn't one without the other.

Which is why, if forced (and CURSE YOU, Nathaniel, for forcing me to), I have to pick this as the film's Best Shot:

When Victoria first hears the audience's applause, this is what we see. Waves crashing on the shore of the stage. It's such a perfectly impressionistic moment, and the film is full of moments like this (especially during the ballet sequences, which could never EVER actually be reproduced on stage). But beyond the perfect metaphor of the shot, note that we have our three main characters in a triangle. Victoria in the foreground, with Lermontov and Julian in the background, almost overtaken completely by the image of the waves. They're the only two people watching that matter to Victoria, but what really, truly matters to her is the dance. And the audience's response. As a performer, I can speak to that high, and it is indeed like ocean waves - you let that applause wash over you like the most lovely ocean water, and try not to get completely swept up in it. You want to stay as grounded as you can. But there will always be people in the audience whose praise you crave, and even in the heat of the moment, as you're swept up in the love of the entire audience, you can spot them clear as day.

Basically, this shot is perfect on every possible level. As is most of The Red Shoes, but this is the one that means the most to me.

Thursday Movie Picks - All in the Family Edition: Mother-Son Relationships

Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. If you like movies, then you should join in: Just pick three movies that relate to the week's theme and tell us about them!

I love my mother. We share a very special, friendly, loving relationship (as most gay boys do with their mothers). A relationship, it must be said, that is COMPLETELY unlike any of the relationships in the films I have picked for this week's All In The Family Edition of Thursday Movie Picks.

Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) Everyone goes on and on about the technically non-existent mother-son relationship in Hitchcock's masterpiece Psycho, but this one shits all over that, if you ask me. Alex Sebastian (super suave Claude Rains) is a Nazi spy living in Brazil after the War, who meets and falls in love with Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), the daughter of one of his former compatriots. But his mother Anna (the terrific Leopoldine Konstantin) suspects that not all is as it seems with Alicia. Turns out she's right - Alicia is spying for the United States - so she contrives to poison Alicia to keep her from reporting to her handler (Cary Grant) until her son sees to reason. It really is Madame Sebastian who holds all the cards in this household, just like...

The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962) ...Mrs. Iselin, who would do anything to see her husband elected to the highest political office. She's the perfect supportive political wife and mother. Except for that one little thing... SPOILER... she's a Communist agent using hypnosis and brainwashing techniques on her son and other soldiers to install a Communist into the Presidency. If you haven't seen it, all I'll say is that if you only know Angela Lansbury as the sweet old lady from Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Murder, She Wrote, then you ain't seen NOTHING yet!

Friday the 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980) Okay, yeah, this kinda feels like a cheat, but COME ON. If you've seen this film - or the opening scene of Wes Craven's Scream - then you know that Jason isn't the killer in the original Friday the 13th. His mother is. And frankly, who can blame her? Those stupid kids were off having sex, doing drugs, and listening to rock & roll music instead of watching her darling little boy, and what do you think happens? He drowns! So Mrs. Voorhees does all she can to honor her son's memory and make sure those damn kids never have any fun. After all, isn't killing for someone the best way to show them you love them?

Thursday Movie Picks - Work Place Movies

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.

Thursday Movie Picks - All in the Family Edition: Mother-Daughter Relationships

Written for the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. You can play, too: Just pick three films that match the week's theme!

This month's All in the Family Edition of Thursday Movie Picks focuses on that trickiest of familial relationships: Mothers and Daughters. These can be either the most loving or the most toxic relationships in a family. I've chosen to focus this week on the latter type, since they're usually more fun. I've included some spoilers for these films, and on the off-chance you haven't seen them (and really, you should, since these are all GREAT films), I've put them in white text. Just highlight and you'll be able to read.

Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) Poor Erica Sayers. She got knocked up while in the corps of one of the most prestigious ballet companies in America, and it ended her career. Thankfully, she had a daughter that she could raise in her image. All she wanted for her daughter, Nina, was for her to grow up into the prima ballerina Erica herself never got the chance to be. But then her daughter went and got herself some psychological problems, and poor Erica had to work even harder to keep her daughter safe. And then, Nina finally gets noticed by the smarmy Artistic Director of the ballet company and gets the lead in Swan Lake, playing both Odile and Odette! Erica is so excited for her daughter, but this honor goes straight to Nina's head - she starts going out late at night, and locking herself in her bedroom, and stealing things from the company's former lead dancer. What happened to Erica's sweet little girl? And then Nina's crazy starts to manifest again, and despite all Erica does to keep her out of the spotlight that is clearly driving her insane, what does her ungrateful little daughter do? She FUCKING STABS HERSELF IN THE STOMACH WITH A PIECE OF BROKEN MIRROR AND DANCES UNTIL SHE FUCKING DIES. Poor Erica.

Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959) Annie Johnson is a sweetheart, beloved by all who come into contact with her. Except, that is, for her daughter Sarah Jane. You see, it is the late 40s and early 50s, and Sarah Jane is light-skinned enough (thanks to her father) that she can pass for white. This is something Annie cannot do and is not interested in doing. But as girls grow up, parents have less and less control over them, and soon enough Sarah Jane has graduated from high school and is working at the local library and dating a nice boy from the church. Or so she told her mother. In reality, she was dating a white boy who beat her when he found out she was black, and working as a performer in a seedy nightclub. When Annie finds out about this job, she rushes off to save her daughter, as any mother would. But the girl won't leave, and the commotion causes her to get fired. So she runs away, breaking her poor mother's heart. And what happens next between them will break your heart, too, unless you're a robot, because the final scenes of this version of Imitation of Life make it the single most effective tear-jerker in Hollywood history.

Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) Veda Pierce is the biggest little shit of them all. How exactly she got that way is admittedly a bit of a mystery, since her mother is a hard worker who had to scrape and save and work her ass off to get what little she has. But Veda is an aspiring classical musician, and only has eyes for the finer things in life, which her mother who loves her dearly continues to provide - despite it forcing her to live beyond her means. And how does Veda thank her mother for her wonderful life? She puts the moves on her mother's husband (in James M. Cain's novel and Todd Haynes's miniseries with Kate Winslet and Evan Rachel Wood, she has a full-blown affair with him), and after he rebuffs her, she FUCKING SHOOTS HIM. And what does our dear Mildred do? She LIES TO SAVE THE LITTLE SHIT. Or at least, she tries to, but can't quite bring herself to go through with it. Which is fine, because no one should be able to slap Joan Crawford and get away with it.