Reviews

I saw this movie on theatrical release and just watched it again last night, I think for the first time since 1973. There are many reasons why this film worked so well. We can put aside all the obvious ones, like the craftsmanship, the casting, a fun plot with a twist or two, and a good script. And of course the music and the cars, a great vibe. Because it's a look-back, it can never be dated.

But in 1973, when norms were being broken, sometimes just for the sake of breaking them, how could a movie about a period in America that by then was derided as square or cornball be such a success? Nostalgia is part of it, but certainly the recognition that, in retrospect, epochal change was coming to America in many forms (cultural, political, social, economic) plays a part. 1973 was close to a nadir in the US. The Vietnam War wasn't over; Watergate was in full swing; the economy was floundering; the first gas/oil crisis hit, and American companies were being beaten badly by Japanese competition. When I think back to my high school days in the mid-seventies, my memories are in black and white, and everything seemed in decay.

I'm sure not everyone felt as much pessimism and ennui but the rewind this film presented allowed moviegoers to escape back to what felt like a simpler, happier time. It also didn't hurt that the characters were all pretty relatable. We could see some of ourselves in just about any of the characters. Interestingly, Lucas struggled to write the Steve-Laurie couple, who represent the squarest and safest of them all.

The ending provides an appealing flip, and life goes on and not everything is resolved. And then come the title cards and we learn that life doesn't always go on, even for the young and the strong. It's Lucas' "Ode on a Grecian Urn." And you leave the theater and are out of a reverie.

I gave this film 10 stars because everything about it seems both necessary and sufficient to the genre. Maybe even genre-defining for the revisionist Western.

The good guys are good, but there's an ambivalent quality, such as Shane's past and Joe Starrett's somewhat overbearing persuasiveness when it comes to his fellow homesteaders, and his disgust at one of them pulling up stakes.

The bad guys are bad. But even old man Ryker has some pathos, as revealed in his monologue about how things were when he first came to ranch. Even Wilson (Palance) shows some human self-awareness when he contradicts Ryker when Ryker vows to kill Starrett ("You mean I'll kill him.")

The gunfights are brief and brutal, shockingly so not for explicit gore but for their suddenness, abruptness and violence.

The cinematography is grand. The pace is crisp. The themes are wistful. There's a regret all around, even as the "good guys"--or most of them--prevail.

The realism and the unsympathetic approach carry this film undated to today.

... that he was still chosen to do Cabaret after this film rightfully flopped. And frankly so are we because Fosse undeniably had the "it" so to speak, but he wasn't able to put it together in this film.

Shirley McClain may have started out wanting to be a dancer/singer, and of course she was a fine dramatic/comedic actor, but she didn't have the chops to pull this off and is repeatedly outshone by her supporting cast in the musical numbers.

Otherwise the movie opens on a dud before coming to one of the just two truly big hits it has. The movie should have opened with Hey Big Spender, and just grab the viewer by the lapels. Besides that and If They Could See Me Now the tunes are vapid. Not even Sammy Davis' Jrs. Cameo is entertaining.

Fosse, consciously or not, stole from every late swinging/hippie 1960's conceit, and from more than a few other shows and movies. He looked like he was channelling Austin Powers from the future, and Batman from the very recent past. This did not age well.

Sweet Charity also ends on a down note, bookending the dull opening. In between the movie is just too long overall as are most of the numbers and dance parts. It's no wonder Cabaret's producer had to lobby his bosses hard to hire Fosse to direct Cabaret, which turned out to be a godsend. Then again, Cabaret had a far, far, better script and songs, and a Heaven-sent duo in Liza Minelli and Joel Grey to carry it all off. Five stars because it's a big production and worth seeing to see where it went wrong.

That's what six stars represents, one above the threshold for recommendation. Good acting and a fair and not terribly implausible plot for an otherwise unremarkable and formulaic buddy/romcom film. It must have been something about the popularity of California wine and celebrity/wealthy hobbiest interest in owning wineries and the cachet of becoming fine wine collectors/experts that put this into the Oscars discussions.

My main gripe about the script and characters is that Jack goes completely against character in what I suppose is meant to be the crisis of the movie (albeit Jack is not the protagonist, Miles is, and so Jack's crisis really can't be the movie's crisis).

Other than that it was a decent watch albeit a small one. "My Dinner with Andre" is a better film--much better--in this sort of "small movie" genre, JMHO.

Or perhaps uncommon sense is putting it better. This David Lean-Noel Coward collaboration, marvelously photographed in Technicolor by Ronald Neame and beautifully restored by the BFI, moves briskly through episodes pointedly informed by historical developments and acting informed by the pathos and determination of wartime (WWII) England. The cast is a who's who of most recognizable midcentury British cinema. Celia Johnson (Ethel Gibbons) always stands out among such a crowd of stars.

I thought it interesting that Noel Coward wanted to play Frank Gibbons (Robert Newton). His play upon which the movie is based came in for some criticism for evidencing a certain disdain for the commoners (from which he came). And it appears that Coward may have acknowledged his shame and condescension in the character of Queenie (Kay Walsh) who admits to her suitor-cum-boy-next-door, Billy (John Mills) that she aspires to escape the middle-class drudgery that binds her parents.

The movie fires on all cylinders from the long tracking shot opening (makes me wonder did Lean copy Hitchcock, vice-versa, or did they each learn the device from someone else?) to the foreboding of "peace in our time" near the end. No matter, the Gibbonses and their friends will "keep calm (mostly) and carry on (definitely)."

The Holdovers is an earnest and sympathetic take on the misfits making do the best they can to face life as it comes at them genre. We see three or four rather flawed human beings thrown together for a bleak intersession between semesters at Barton, a private school for wealthy but not too smart kids who need a "hen house ladder" to step up to the legacy admissions that await them at elite or at least name-brand private universities.

Luckily a handful of the holdover students are whisked away in one of their daddy's private helicopters before this movie suffers any more teen rivalry and meanness and we get down to three tough cases: the remaining upperclassman, the antiquities teacher of much-too-long tenure and the cafeteria manager. The first two are a bit broken by circumstance and genetics, the latter by having lost her only child in Vietnam. While holding over for three weeks isn't exactly a crucible that forces a crisis, things happen that move the story to a catharsis.

Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa (and Carrie Preston too) give well-contained performances with plenty of pathos. The film oozes early-1970s vibe (the party's over and America is in a pretty big rut) to which the cinematography and wintry bleakness contribute no small part.

I did enjoy the film but something seemed missing, the denouement I guess doesn't resolve anyone's circumstance really, except maybe Mr. Hunham's, who, unwillingly, must start a new chapter in his life free of the bounds of 30(?) years of musty lodgings, underwhelming pupils and dining hall privileges. And he seems the least likely of the three to be able to prevail in the outside world but maybe surviving it is all he or anyone really can aspire to.

Queued this up post-Oscars. It's a well-written and very well-acted film in the crime/courtroom drama genre. This take on the conflicting/uncertain evidence or no witness (or maybe just a single witness) homocide/suicide delves into the interiors of the relationships of the suspect, the deceased (her husband) and their sight-impaired son. It also presents an unnerving look at the so-called inquisitorial system of justice that prevails in France and some other countries.

The acting is quite fine. Sandra Huller is enigmatic and worthy of suspicion. An Academy Award nomination for Milo Machado-Graner as the couple's boy would not have been out of place as he looms large in the decision.

This is a serious movie for fans of serious film. Although certain adult themes are important to the story, there is no sex, nudity and only brief but essential strong language. Steram it or see it wherever you can.

Cabaret won eight Academy Awards and I don't envy the Oscar judges having to choose between such fine films of disparate character as Cabaret and the Godfather in awarding the best film Oscar. But when you take home best actress, best supporting actor, best director, best cinematography, etc., you really have something on your hands.

The songs are toe-tappers, lyrically memorable, and so germane. The casting, impeccable. The plot, direct and well-integrated, it never lets down. There's humor, pathos, foreboding. The dialogue cracking and poignant.

It's amazing what topics could garner a film an "X certificate" (in the UK) as late as 1972. That said, it's great this was made when it was. If it was made today it would be full of unnecessary full-frontal nudity and simulated sex. Cabaret shows how such topics and plot lines can be presented when necessary to the story without actually having to show the deeds.

The only regrettable thing is that Judy Garland didn't live to see her daughter simply kill it. Liza slays all comers with her performance.

I'll be watching this again and soon. The music is just too good to resist.

That certainly could have been better.

Plusses:

Characterizations largely true to life. Oppenheimer spoke softly. Emily Blunt did not "overact" Kitty, who was a very volatile person to say the least. Groves was a jerk but was an honest, forthright one. Few liberties taken with the story, which sticks to the facts and direct quotes mostly. It's an important story in several respects.

Minuses. Ensemble cast has made-for-TV feel. Lots of stock acting. Feels contrived despite being factual. Lousy score with abrupt volume increase substituting for dramatic effect. Lots of whispering and dialogue submerged by thuds and booms. Too much Strauss, too many closeups of his face and his mouth moving. Not enough exposition of Oppenheimer's character, who is mainly portrayed as weird and eccentric when he was also tremendously charming and solicitous and not always condescending and cutting. Too much with the quick cuts. The triple or sometimes quadruple simultaneous anachronous storylines probably a detriment to the exposition of the plot and suspense as opposed to a more chronological layout.

Takeaway: Read the book it is based on. I finished it just before watching this film and without having done so, I would have been wondering what the heck was happening. It also helped me to know the substance of what was being said in dialogue even when I couldn't understand (clearly hear) parts of it.

Marlee Matlin's performance was certainly deserving of an Oscar, notwithstanding her then-boyfriend William Hurt's odious remark asking her why she thought she was deserving of the award against so many older and more experienced nominees. Otherwise I was disappointed in the treatment this subject received. There is a powerful story to be told from Sarah (Matlin's) perspective but it is buried under a very standard rom-dram treatment and is unfortunately related from the point of view of the teacher, James (William Hurt), who in essence tries to break the wild mare Sarah represents. Of course this approach at the time was dictated by the constraints on making a commercially successful Hollywood film, but today it seems a bit disrespectful of the point of view of the hearing-impaired (for the record I am not hearing-impaired, so perhaps I am not even in a position to make this judgment). But to me it did seem to somehow trivialize the story and make it less impactful than it might have been.

Having a deaf central character was not novel at the time; Johnny Belinda comes immediately to mind. Having a deaf actor play the part, I believe, was novel and worthy of recognition all the way around.

The plot is otherwise quite formulaic and undramatic in that sense. Other commenters have made this point so I won't belabor it with my own examples. I will also agree that having William Hurt repeat vocally everything that Matlin signed (so the audience could understand it) quickly became tedious. Maybe subtitles wouldn't have worked either, but much of what Matlin's character was "saying" was obvious from the context or could have been gleaned from Hurt's responses. Certainly by the halfway point I knew the signs for "I love you" and this, at least, didn't have to be vocalized by Hurt every time Maitlan or Hurt said it (which is often). Imagine making this film in such a way that the audience could better appreciate the silent world of the deaf and in which the audience had to make an effort to understand what Matlin was saying, or to grasp what she meant or was feeling (at least some of the time). Now that would be a moving experience, and one closer to emotional reality. I wonder if it could be done?

Count me also as deploring the score; those synths which were maybe novel (and probably cheap) in the 1980s sound cheap and superficially plasticine today. The diegetic music, perhaps other than the Staples Singers, is also typically awful of some of the pop sounds of the era.

One of the '60s best movies, and one that has aged very well (or not aged a bit) and remains relevant despite usually being tagged as a "Swinging Sixties" timepiece (it was not and is not). Michael Caine gives a performance of a career in a cherry of a part, but there are so many strong parts and so many wonderful supporting actors that the movie succeeds on every level with humor, pathos ... the works. A movie must be very good or very bad to be sampled or referenced so often as Alfie, and Alfie is very, very good.

So well directed and shot, with a fantastic score by Sonny Rollins, Alfie moves smoothly through its vignettes--cum--plot to a thoughtful resolution: literally, what's it all about? Is there a more enduring question and elusive answer?

And there is one other very poignant aspect to this film, which is external to it. One of Alfie's "birds," who spends all of about 20 seconds on the screen, is the artist, actress and once-"forgotten" personage Pauline Boty, one of the founders (if that's the right term) and only female founder, of what came to be known as Pop Art. She's the operator of the dry cleaners with whom Alfie has a regular appointment. Her short, tragic but wonderful real-life story is worthy of its own film--and your investigation. Her works--what remains of them--now fetch astronomical prices, and she has now the acclaim and respect that only her intimates and sophisticates accorded her in the aftermath of her untimely demise.

Bookended by scruffy, seemingly knowing dogs, Alfie may make you wonder, just what is it all about?

Seems like commenters are of two minds about Elvis. As someone who was a teenager when Elvis died, but who was not then an Elvis fan (Elvis by 1977 was a subject of ridicule) I enjoyed this film as entertainment, and as a reminder of just how iconic and momentous he was in music and culture. And in the end, he deserved not ridicule or mockery, but pity.

This is a dramatization, not a documentary. I don't carry any baggage regarding the director's style. I don't feel like I'm the guardian of Elvis' legacy. I'm not the history police. I watched the movie not realizing Tom Hanks was the actor portraying Col. Parker.

Certain artistic liberties are taken in this film, but overall the film is pretty true to the subject and the core of his story. Austin Butler does a fantastic job in this film and even more than his appearance, he has small mannerisms that are just so Elvis. It was fun watching him.

Elvis was really a tragic figure. Oddly he had a lot in common with the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia: they both wore themselves out performing for adoring crowds and supporting a massive entourage whom they could not let down. Their paths through unhealthy, drug abusing lifestyles converged from very different directions, but were equally sad.

Thought the movie flew by. I didn't mind the hectic pace, the quick cuts, the spastic tracking shots, or the cartoonish titles during the segues. Well worth watching.

The Witchfinder General (aka The Conqueror Worm in the US), while worth watching, doesn't deliver the goods as a horror film. It's gratuitously (if realistically) brutal and violent in its depiction of the torture to which accused witches were put, as well as their cruel executions by hanging, burning and drowning. There's not much plot or suspense, however, nor is their much in the way of character development or even explication of why certain victims are charged with being witches. And this is not a classic Vincent Price turn. His portrayal of Hopkins is fine, but nothing like the camp/arch approach he usually takes to villainy.

This film does belong to this period of about 1968-1973 of ultraviolent adult horror films where pushing the envelope was the point and tossed-off female nudity was somehow thought to be a titillating and perhaps degrading necessity.

The movie is nicely filmed and does have a bit of a dreamlike or nightmarish quality to it. And all reminders of how mass hysteria and deranged beliefs can lead to cruel atrocities are necessary and even welcome--it's not a stretch to say that, particularly in the US today, this could happen given the latest rejection of science and logic in favor of belief and emotion by too many. But ultimately there is too little story and too much painful and deranged screaming to put this over the top of the five star hurdle.

If you're interested in a literal pastiche of Hitchcock's Psycho, Rear Window and Vertigo, heavily sexed up and nudi-fied, Dressed to Kill is for you. Homage is OK. Transparent copying, not so much. The De Palma veneer also doesn't do anything to make this movie better than those it aspires to. Comparisons of this score with the greats of Bernard Herman are way wide of the mark. The music is dreadfully treacly and often seems like it's been slowed down from what might have been its original recording speed.

The plot is rather obvious and unsuspenseful. Drawn out scenes do not equate to suspense. Not every shot has to be a tracking shot. It's sprinkled with schlock-shock surprises though. The movie does check the box for gratuitous sex, nudity, pornographic dialog, and victimization and objectification of women. (Or as was said of another director's slasher films: "Get the lesbians naked, then kill them.") Stock characterizations: Nancy Allen as the incredibly young, fresh and beautiful prostitute with a heart of gold; Angie Dickinson (already victimized by plastic surgery) as the oversexed MYLF; Michael Caine as Norman Bates, MD in psychiatry.

Five stars because ... well, some people will like it, and it epitomizes a genre and an era that's best left in the past.

It's weird to note that Badlands is both the quintessential American film yet it is also sui generis and completely out of time. Out of time both in that it is nominally set sometime in the late 1950s but is not dependent on this era. Out of time also in the sense that it doesn't appear to belong to any particular filmmaking era. It can't even be said to run against the tenor or feel of early 1970s films. It is really a film apart. It's incongruous without being conspicuous for it. Somehow Terrence Malick succeeded in presenting a story in a dreamlike or fairytale manner though it proceeds in a very matter of fact and almost antiseptic way.

The last is not to say that the film lacks depth, visual beauty, or any emotional quality--quite the opposite. But this all comes so naturally that you don't feel it coming; you instead experience it as if you were living it.

Spacek and Sheen give marvelous performances, and Spacek's narration somehow frames and nearly justifies all this nihilistic and senseless action. Sheen has the shallow effect down nearly perfectly. Nothing is dwelled upon. All that matters to him is himself, the now, and as a matter of convenience, his companion.

I never fail to watch this when it comes on.

Because it is. Based on the novel "A Case of Need" by Jeffery Hudson, this film only took a few frames for me to opine that it seemed a lot like a Michael Crichton story. Of course Hudson is Crichton's pseudonym, and the film proceeds in the thriller/mystery mode of many of its author's more famous efforts.

Despite a lot of heavy themes and cliched or stereotypical intimidating "doctor-as-god" and above everyone else tropes, the plot turns on a much more banal matter. And of course, not only is Coburn above it all as a pathologist, he is apparently the only one seriously interested in investigating the death of a poor young woman and exonerating a wrongly accused colleague. He's awfully good at his sideline, too. There's a couple of too-convenient coincidences to stitch the story together, putting this squarely in the average mass of just OK mysteries. But if you're sentimental for a dose of late 1960s-early 1970s hip doctor worship (back when the doctor-image was of cutting at 11 am, teeing off at 1 pm, and partying all night with gorgeous hospital staff at jazz and booze-filled parties, and not being bogged down in insurance reimbursement forms as they complain of today), then this is a film to depart to that (real or imagined) nostalgia of 50 years ago.

James Coburn is his dependably irrepressible and ever-toothy, shaggy self. Watching Jennifer O'Neill made me ask, "whatever happened to her?" Skye Aubrey (Nurse Angela) seemed so familiar but I couldn't really place her in any other memorable roles-maybe soap opera or the Love Boat?

It might be interesting to compare this film to the "what if" version had Blake Edwards had full or at least more control over it. Apparently the shooting schedule was curtailed, and the film edited, against his wishes. Even so, I'm not sure that added runtime, for example, is indicated, because the film, which is really a pastiche of medico/detective/procedural vignettes tethered to the basic plot line, seems not to need any additional plot points to complete the story arc. And at its final 101 minutes, it doesn't detain to boredom.

Stunning landscapes and perilous climbing can't save what is an otherwise dull and inexplicable "romance" between an aging, mountaineering doctor and his enthralled niece. Even for the 1980s, the idea of an infatuation that begins in a niece of 10 years' age and ripens into an extramarital affair with someone of the third degree of consanguinity is pretty creepy (not that it doesn't happen). But we never get any idea of just why Kate became obsessed with her dead father's brother, or why Douglas reciprocates so easily. Certainly these are more Edwardian mores than Victorian! Maybe by the 1930s, everyone was this jaded.

There's also a rather abrupt, intervening, at least facial attraction between the climbing guide and Kate, but I guess it was necessary to prolong the film or at least add intrigue to the plot (it scarcely moves the needle) and it is barely imaginable that such a servant would actually confront his master over it. I also never got the digression about the shipbuilding company, as whether Douglas chooses to take charge of it or not has zero bearing on the story. There's one further strange scene presaging the ending, which I won't mention for the sake of leaving out spoilers.

Despite this adaptation, I think maybe the short story it was adapted from might be worth a read. Certainly it motivated the producer and director to adapt it to the screen. Unlike the climbers, however, this film never scales any great height.

Once a Thief may be a well-used storyline, but it tells that story with a frankness and grip in a refreshing setting. The acting is fine, the cinematography and direction are compelling. The bad guys are pretty degenerate; Van Heflin as the rogue cop is nicely cast against type. Ann-Margret likewise.

As this movie wrapped, it really seemed like the conclusion of an episodic cops and robbers drama, and I immediately thought of the Streets of San Francisco which debuted only a couple of years later. It also had a good bit of the edge and style of Bullitt, which also debuted one or two years after this.

Seriously ... and thankfully they are not. Maybe some of us know a guy like Harry, a regular schmo with an attentive if somewhat mousy and tired wife, nice kinds, grandkids and no mortgage. One day he spies Ann-Margaret, incongruously cast as a lightly used (no previous owner/demonstrator model) and completely unattached barmaid in her first day on the job at Harry's corner bar, just ready to give him an extended, great big wet kiss, because, you know, it's his birthday and also because there has to be an extramarital affair to set this film in motion. The mutual attraction is facile and convenient, and the film does move from one predictable plot point to another: distraught wife, angry daughter, another daughter making a life-changing decision, etc. It's all life-changing but without resolution or any real change: life goes on and perhaps that is the one nod to reality.

As others note this is Lifetime Channel-- (does that still exist?) or Hallmark (maybe sad Hallmark) Channel--level film making, from a TV pro. The cast is first-rate but it's such a predictable and formulaic script, there's really no need to check the spoiler button. This one can't break the five-star threshold to significance.

Having been a toddler when DeSalvo--well it was DeSalvo--was inhabiting his Measuring Man, Green Man and finally Strangler personas, and living just a half mile from him (and also being intimately acquainted with the location (in Belmont) used for Loretta's neighborhood and the Cambridge police station), I was really looking forward to this film, since the full subject really hasn't been treated dramatically, notwithstanding the 1968 Strangler movie featuring Tony Curtis. Alas, this noirish crime/reporter drama falls short of its subject, including even the story-within-story of the two "girl" reporters who largely drove the investigation at its early stages. The case has so many threads, all seeming touched on in the film, but none satisfactorily developed. It might have been done more fully in a season of one-hour episodes, perhaps loosely corresponding to each murder and subsequent developments. At least, Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole get more deserved recognition, albeit posthumously, for their intrepid and implacable reporting.

There's a couple of confected scenes or plot twists (the movie is only "inspired by" true events), but these aren't obviously improbable (well maybe one is) to someone unfamiliar with the case. I agree that the film suffers a bit from the conspiracists' take on whether DeSalvo really committed all (or any) of the murders, which absorbs the last quarter of the film. Finally, the cinematography is a bit overboard on the dark and dreary: even the newsroom is dark; one wonders how the staff could see to write.

I've seen this movie a few times but always wondered at what meaning, if any, it had. And while I'll pass on the discussion of objective and subjective reality, I'll just mention my appreciation this time of the spectrum that Thomas traverses in his appreciation of his existence. At one end--from the beginning of the film--his life is something of an excess of mindless indulgence. As the movie progresses, his perception of the same or similar experiences clearly changes quite radically and the indulgence becomes emptiness. This happens on a number of levels, both professionally and in his personal relationships (with, for instance, his artist friend and their shared lover). In many ways this imitates or repeats his experience with the story's unsolved (and on yet another level, unsolvable) mystery. It's a very clever--and I don't mean that disparagingly--conceit that rewards concentration and consideration.

When this idea (or ideas) is poured into what is an undeniably attractive package (well-directed, scripted, cast, filmed and edited, and the whole swinging London backdrop makes me nostalgic for the sights and sounds of my childhood) it makes for irresistible (and inevitable--I almost always record this when it comes up) viewing. This last time, I really began to get it, I think.