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Reviews
Good Sam (1948)
'Good Sam,' bad movie
Along with the James Stewart film, made at the same time, "Magic Town," "Good Sam" belongs to a sub-genre of movies that should be known as "Frank Capra films without the vaunted 'Capra touch.'"
I hadn't seen "Good Sam" in several decades. I remembered it as leaden, tedious and unimaginative, utterly devoid of the humor, whimsy and social commentary that became the hallmark of Frank Capra's films, which this can only have aspired to being. After viewing it again I now have to add that it should have been a profound embarrassment to everyone associated with it.
The film's full of talented actors, its director was responsible for wonderful films ranging from "Duck Soup," to "Going My Way" to "An Affair to Remember," but I have seldom seen a film made by skilled, accomplished people that hits so many wrong notes.
Stargate SG-1: The Other Side (2000)
If you can see only one episode of "SG-1," let it be "The Other Side."
"Hateful?"
Imagine if the Nazis had dug up a stargate and made contact with a well-intentioned alien civilization whom they asked for assistance as the allied armies were closing in on Berlin in 1945. And the Nazis presented themselves to these aliens as peace-loving victims of another nation's war of conquest.
Not knowing why the war was being fought, but presuming that there was likely a philsophical and ethical divide between the combatants, wouldn't the aliens want to know on which side of that divide the faction with which they made contact sat before committing themselves to render aid?
That's PRECISELY what this splendid episode is about, an allegory for that what-if scenario. If it has any flaws, it's that the reversal in Jack's trade-for-technology-no-matter-what commitment is too sudden; a more nuanced two-part episode would have been even more welcome than what we've been given.
As it is, the episode takes a moral stance, in this case against racism - as embodied by the Eurondans' barely concealed loathing of Teal'c - eugenics and genocide that the show seldom allowed itself.
Through ten years and two-hundred and thirteen episodes, "The Other Side" is arguably the series' very finest hour.
The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952)
The real miracle is that this horrid film didn't destroy Jack Warner's reputation
Covers the same basic ground as Fox's infinitely superior "The Song of Bernadette" (1944), but with none of that earlier film's subtlety, fine performances and music, or assurance of dramatic narrative. This is a clumsy, ham-handed attempt on the part of Warner Bros. to make the case to the public and Congress's House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the darkest days of McCarthyism and its anti- Communist witch-hunts, that Hollywood was, if not exactly a model of piety, at least not a den of Red subversives, and not a few of the religious extravaganzas of the 1950's were made with this goal in mind. Earning a profit at the box office or kudos from critics were not high on the studio's list of priorities for this claptrap -- it was propaganda, plain and simple.
In short, this is a dreadful film that does a grave disservice to its subject matter.
Like Crazy (2011)
Drecks and the Single Girl
If this film were merely an aberration, I wouldn't care very much about the ninety minutes wasted by sitting through it, but it is, unfortunately, becoming the norm for modern film-going when practically NO ONE seems to know how to fashion and tell a proper story.
More and more there seem to be those who get the notion in their heads that they have a story to tell, when they actually have NO story, the end result being that those with the misfortune to sit through their eventual handiwork have to pay for their delusions.
"Like Crazy" (the title should apply to its makers' above delusions) is a bland, shapeless, pointless excuse for a movie. It betrays an utter lack of understanding of dramatic construction and a director so concerned with film-ic "technique" (however he defines it) that is, in fact, so inartful and overbearingly designed to display what a genius he is, that he ignores even the most rudimentary demands of story-telling.
He is no director of actors; if he were, he would have seen from the outset that his cast is utterly unbalanced and mismatched. Brit Anna (Felicity Jones) -- articulate and expressive -- seems as though she's forty, while her paramour, Jacob (Anton Yelchin) seems as though he's twelve, so devoid is he of any discernible personality -- six cubic feet of empty space.
Jones probably has a career ahead of her, if she can find better material and directors who can wipe the memory of this vapid exercise from its unfortunate viewers, while Yelchin has none -- if we're lucky.
The film's chronology is muddled, rendering the normal dramatic mechanism of cause-and-effect inoperable and the characters' motivations (if any) inscrutable. Nothing actually happens in the film for the first thirty minutes of its running time. When an event of consequence -- the denial of Anna's visa to re-enter the U.S. -- nothing much else happens for the balance of the movie, which is broken up by numerous, wordless and gag-inducing interludes of the young lovers' romantic interludes that hark back to the worst excesses of the late 1960s and early '70s when such slow-motion sequences were de rigeur fashionable cinematic expression.
In short, this film as as ghastly a piece of inept, self-indulgent dreck as this reviewer has ever had the misfortune to sit through (and I got to see it for free. A note to its makers: Please don't do me any more favors).
IMDb allows reviewers to a numerical value on a scale of one to ten; the only conceivable injustice greater than having to sit through this movie is that there is no rating of "zero."
Valley of the Giants (1938)
The saps really flowed into theaters in 1938 and '52
While an undistinguished piece of filmmaking, "Valley of the Giants" dovetails nicely with Warner Bros.' often cited theme of Resistance to Tyranny and Struggle for Justice, so often seen in films as diverse as "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang," "The Adventures of Robin Hood," "The Life of Emile Zola" and "Confessions of a Nazi Spy," the unusual subject here being ecological devastation (also visited the year before in Warners' first all-three-strip Technicolor feature, "Gold is Where You Find It.").
Interestingly, fourteen years later, when the studio remade the story as "The Big Trees," the original film's villain, Fallon ("Steve Fallon" in "Valley of the Giants." "Jim Fallon" in "The Big Trees") became the protagonist, tailored for the talents of Kirk Douglas, whose peerless aptitude for essaying misguided heels was already well established by the early 1950's.
It should also be noted that character actor Harry Cording, a mainstay at Warner Bros. in the 1930's and '40's, appears in both versions. The Hale family are also represented in both films: Warners contact player Alan Hale ("Ox Smith") appears in "Valley of the Giants," while his son, Alan, jr plays "Tiny" in "The Big Trees."
Sunshine (2007)
There's nothing new under, or in, the Sun
A few months ago, the film's producer, Andrew MacDonald, appeared on the Fox Movie Channel's "Life After Film School" series, plugging "Sunshine." He kept harping on the fact that "Sunshine" was the first movie in which the characters "go to the Sun," but was notable in his failure to say that the drama was emotionally moving or relevant.
Beyond his ignoring that that's the whole reason to make a piece of drama, Mr MacDonald also failed to note that, four years earlier, Paramount had released a film called "The Core." It was a well-made film, with a top-notch cast (and, at some point, its own producer may have gone on television to brag that it was the first film to ever go to the center of the earth, though that claim, obviously, wouldn't have been true), and didn't make any money.
"Sunshine" and "The Core" are the same bloody story, Mr MacDonald (minor variances in plot notwithstanding)! The center of the Earth, or the inside of the Sun, what does it matter? Well, it doesn't.
Frankly, I don't even remember "Sunshine"'s ever being released (I had to look up when it hit theaters to even confirm that it had been), and imagine that audiences felt the same way. They stayed away from "The Core," and they avoided "Sunshine." When will producers and studios learn from the mistakes of others?