bluerider521 Reviews

Freud (1962)

Fiction within fiction within more fiction as biography

[5/10 · 22 March 2014]

I think this film has to be placed in it's time. In the early 1960s, Freud was still champion of American Psychiatry, but he was beginning to get rocked by sharp left jabs. When was the right cross going to come to knock him down? Clearly soon. Thus, he was no longer seen as the visionary man of science who illuminated the human condition-which this film says explicitly it is about. You really couldn't make the standard Freudian biography anymore. A strength of this film is it did not actually do so despite its claims to the contrary. It tells a fantastical tale of a strange guy. Just right!

Freud's reputation has morphed into this current image: A gifted fiction writer who created weird "illnesses" which no one ever quite saw in read life. He described the patient's fantastic back stories (dwelling in their subconscious), and his magical treatments which always worked. A lot of "theory" (ever changing, unscientific and contradictory yadda yadda) was also tossed around over the years.

Cift staggers around as if his pacemaker had just gone off and given him an unexpected jolt. Huston said he was frequently drunk or stoned. He was perfect for the part: a dazed confused guy having fantasies. Exactly what this movie was about.

Mildred Pierce (2011)

Superior art; middling entertainment

[7/10 · 20 February 2014]

I have not read the book, but I have read that this adaptation was quite faithful to the book. The classic movie was not; it was made as a melodramatic murder mystery with Joan Crawford as a Grand Dame Mildred. Thus, the movie was great entertainment, but as a life lesson, as a cautionary life story, it was nonsense. This version was far superior as a story the average person could identify with. Great sets, clothing, cars, even minor period detail. I'm glad I saw it and I would recommend it to others, but...

It does really drag in places. I appreciate what I learned about opening a restaurant, but such detail only slowed down a story which was mainly about other things. While the camera lingers on Veda, and lingers, and lingers, little attention is given to explaining Mildred's developing financial problems. Emotional explosions may go on too long.

I'm glad that this miniseries was made. I wouldn't have wanted it made any differently, but quite a few people will find it tedious.

American Hustle (2013)

A not quite polished gem

[8/10 · 20 January 2014]

It is hard to find much intelligent comedy today. AH manages to be just that. The story is engrossing (if not quite gripping.) There was a stimulating sexual miasma throughout the proceedings. The characters are compelling and their motivations are understandable. The film is intrinsically enjoyable-it happened a long time ago, no one suffered horribly, there were many funny lines. The performances were superior. The film could drag on, but this was handled by bringing in Jennifer Lawrence (otherwise a superfluous character) to really liven thing up.

The ending was rushed after more than two hours of meandering story.

No, not great. But very, very good. It is superior entertainment.

Damsels in Distress (2011)

Is this about you?

[5/10 · 16 January 2014]

There are only about five basic stories around, so the writer's challenge is to make something new and interesting out of one of these basic stories. You can change the type of people it happens to, change the time period, and, in doing these things, bring in the styles, and metaphors of such people. An audience will turn out if they believe they are seeing themselves depicted on the screen. Thus, Damsels in Distress is supposed to depict contemporary female college students. It is a satiric comedy, so it has license for some broad exaggeration.

Exaggerate it certainly does. A group of sophisticated young women seek to straighten out all that is wrong at a middle level college. Some of the group are incredibly naive themselves. The college men are either super phonies or so dumb that they could be played by the three stooges. Then kind of nothing happens as these premises are played out in a series of rather lame episodes. It ends with a satire of films of a distant past. But the styles of dress, word usage, intonations, and attitudes are (apparently) contemporary to the targeted audience of this film. If you are not the right age, social class, and gender, you will miss some of the targets of the satire.

Thus, this film has some curiosity value if you are not the type who says 'this is about us." If it is about you, enjoy it.

Christmas Eve (1947)

Not quite coherent bit of fluff

[5/10 · 22 December 2013]

I have a feeling that this picture was meant to be quite different. For one thing, Ann Harding, a woman in her 40s plays an eighty year old. The usual reason for doing this is that the script can have flashbacks (long flashbacks) to her youth. Not here. Since Harding's star had faded years before, she would not have been hired just for the marquee value of her name. There was probably a big chunk of the original script unused.

Her sons have to show up on Christmas eve to show that they can manage her estate, otherwise this management is given to a shady nephew. Similar crises have been a solid structure for films for years. We then see the three sons is scenes from their current lives, every scene in the genre for which each of the three male leads were then famous.This is the great weakness of this movie. These scenes were just poorly, even amateurishly, done. George Brent's romantic comedy was neither romantic nor funny. Poor Joan Blondel wears herself out running around trying to add some humor to the scene, but without funny lines, she can't.

George Raft has gangster/foreign intrigue problems to deal with. He handles his situation quickly, too quickly for any tension to develop. Finally, Randolph Scott is-what else?-a cowboy brought into an adoption racket investigation by Dolores Moran. Moran seems to be imitating Joan Blondel: plenty of movement and energy, but she is sunk by insipid lines. Moran, one of sexiest performers to ever be on the screen, looks almost dowdy and exudes zero sexual energy.

Happy ending, of course. Pleasant enough movie to watch, but what was it supposed to be originally? Probably, a much better movie.

Gangster Squad (2013)

Bang Bang...Bang Bang!

[1/10 · 21 December 2013]

No matter how bad a movie is, I always find something entertaining in it. This unfortunate parcel of garbage is an exception There in nothing, NOTHING in it of any merit. It might entertain a 13 year old boy, but anyone else has seen every scene in it, heard every line in it, and experienced every sound effect in it, a few dozen times The story is ridiculous; it is only the most superficial of stories. The characters are cartoonish. None of this really matters. The only point of story and lines in this exercise in sad-masochistic exploitation is to fill out a few seconds between endless shootings explosions, blood and gore, fires, and moronic behavior.

All the performers, especially the leads, look embarrassed. In fact, they should be ashamed of themselves. No one can need money badly enough to appear in this. Starvation would be a viable alternative for me.

Thus, bang bang! Bang bang! Boom. Bang bang. Flick a cigarette lighter in a way which would impress a 13 year old, not very bright boy. Bang Bang.

The Lemon Drop Kid (1951)

Old Ski nose on the downward slope

[5/10 · 16 December 2013]

I was a big Bob Hope fan all through the 1940s. In his movies, he always played the hapless loser who lucks his way out of trouble and into a beautiful woman's arms. In this one he plays a con man. Con men can be funny if they are complete incompetents or if they successfully con someone who deserves to be conned. In this movie, only half of each of the above occurs and it is thus less funny and inconsistent.

Hope starts out a loser and a craven coward in this one, but at the end of the movie as his schemes work, he becomes smarmy and struts around in an unappealing way. I hated this; it undermined all the previous likable schnook characters Hope had played.

I had already read the Runyon story about the Lemon Drop Kid when this film was first released and I was disappointed that the movie contained almost no part of it and only a soupcon of Runyon English could be heard.

Maxwell was attractive and sang well. The song "Silver Bells" is a good one. There were many superior character actors in this, but none of them had a chance to really register.

I can't think of a Bob Hope move made subsequent to this that I liked. This started a downhill slide for me.

Kill Your Darlings (2013)

Cherish Your Darlings

[6/10 · 29 November 2013]

Allen Ginsberg, who has no thoughts of writing poetry, leaves a very troubled New Jersey family to go to Columbia. There he comes of age artistically and sexually. He meets the later day Beats, all of them relentlessly displaying the signature behaviors which would later make them infamous They all frolic around.. The seeds of a movement are sown. Kind of an old movie plot: Andy Hardy with sex, drugs, jazz and a crazy mother.

Poor America has no poetry but the doggerel of Ogden Nash, the film says, ignoring the contemporary modernist poetry of Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams. Thus, Ginsburg, it says, rose as a unique pioneer poet from the miasma of jazz, drugs, avant garde friends and almost out of the closet homosexuality to which he was introduced.. The film is much too simplistic to be taken as a consequential story of the creation of the Beat Movement. Women are treated badly in the few moments they appear, and Ginsberg is reduced to a mere observer for some periods of time

Then there is a killing. Things get muddled. Very muddled. Ginsberg who was in no way involved tries to help out and is castigated and rejected. We don't know why. Everybody goes their own way. End of story. All of these diverse elements do not add up to a coherent story.. The script writers have included too many of their "darlings" at the expense of cohesiveness.

I can't see how this would be of interest to anyone not fascinated by, and knowledgeable about, the Beat Movement. For those who are, this is worth seeing as long as they have only modest expectations.

Splitting Heirs (1993)

A smile here and there

[5/10 · 30 September 2013]

This film just doesn't quite make it. It is worth a smile here and there, but there are no laughs. The story isn't compelling. It is just a structure to hang comic bits on. Fine. But the comic bits are old and their timing is a bit off. Eric Idol and John Cleese are what you would expect, but no more than that.

Barbara Hersey is a problem. She plays a nympho middle aged woman and an aristocrat. This combination was supposed to be funny but it wasn't. She overdid the sexy part to the point where it was neither erotic nor funny.

I have a feeling that there is an inside story on why this wasn't better than it is.

Twenty Plus Two (1961)

A Nice Neat Job

[7/10 · 26 August 2013]

A lawyer begins a search for a woman who went missing as a teen ten years before. He is also forced at gunpoint to take on a search for the missing brother of "the king of the confidence men." He interviews colorful characters, knocks on doors, has flashbacks to his own life, and it all comes together at the end.

The plot is intriguing. It is complicated enough to demand your full attention, but not so complicated to be hard to follow. The jazz score has been done many times before and since. It goes well with the movie, but it is inappropriately intrusive here and there.

All in all, a nice, neat job. My one complaint is that costar, Jeanne Crain, has little to do here. The costar should have been Dina Merril. I am not so much concerned about billing, I am just a devoted fan of Jeanne Crain

Rings on Her Fingers (1942)

Good Potential-Poor Delivery

[5/10 · 24 June 2013]

Where did this come from? I never heard of it. Gene Tierny with a Brookly accent? Laird Cregar? Has to be fun! It was but only a little.

Fonda is doing his "B" version of "The Lady Eve". I've seen it too often. No one has any real snappy lines. The movie relies on situation comedy and a chase at the end. Sometimes these are good, but if I wanted chases, the Bowery Boys might have sufficed.

The film seemed to be a bit pasted together. New characters appear out of the blue and things are referenced in the dialogue which were not in the film. These were so obvious that it bothered me.

Was it my imagination or did the background music feature snatches of the theme from "Laura"?

City for Conquest (1940)

Fantastic in its time; great now

[8/10 · 12 June 2013]

This was made for an urban immigrant audience, and it must have touched them mightily in 1940. Ultimately, this is about poverty and ambition. It is still great; only a grinch will not tear up at the end. Corny, dated, melodramatic, full of clichés, but played by the most professional cast you can imagine. It touches on basic human emotions and needs which have not changed since 1940.

Now and then a 21st century movie comes along which can compete. I go to see them. Most of the time I am part of only a half dozen people in the theater. The great genius of the old studios was that they could make movies which touched on the human condition in such a way that it appealed to a mass audience.

Dixiana (1930)

Takes a while to get used to

[5/10 · 9 June 2013]

I saw this in the NYC Museum of the Moving Image before cable and satellite. I went tom see it because of the early technicolor. The story and the music were quaint at best, but I felt weird as I watched the racist mentality. I was watching a time when people, who probably considered themselves liberal, were clueless about the psychological impact of the racism of daily life.

Wheeler and Woolsey surprised and fascinated me. I had no idea that this comedy duo had even existed. There was something about them which gave me a funny feeling in my stomach. They looked strange, particularly Woolsey. They did comedy routines which were meant to be funny, but were weirdly humorless to me.. They might have been doing pantomime; the punch lines just fell flat.. They were like my first taste of pickled olives in childhood. Eech! Yet, like olives, I have gotten used to Wheeler and Woolsey. In fact, they are fairly funny in this movie, once one gets used to them. The two strip technicolor is great.

Do not start to see this as a casual entertainment. It will bore you. It has great historical interest to comedy, technicolor, and old musical fans, however.

I Love You to Death (1990)

Mildly Ausing Then Tedious

[5/10 · 27 May 2013]

This was a mildly amusing comedy, but with all the talent in this film, it should have been better. The trouble was that every humorous premise was relentlessly hammered home again and again. Finally, there is an unlikely sentimental happy ending which is just too silly to even be comedy.

Many situations are clichés which have been done very often before and done better. There are stoned out freaks who confuse everything, a guy who is hard to kill, a second tier Don Juan with the same moth eaten lime for every woman he meets, etc. these all go back decades before this film was made. This would be no problem except that each gag seems overplayed and goes on forever.

The best performance was Joan Plowwright. Her fuming intense anger was funny, much more so that Tracy Ullman's irritating hysteria.

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)

Great Color Photography

[6/10 · 19 May 2013]

I had heard that this was another exquisitely filmed fantasy by Jack Cardiff. Indeed it is. I saw the TCM version with restored color; some of the color was off. but the color overall was great. The Technicolor was fantastic in spots. It was often moody, eerie. bright, strange contrasts….wow! There were compositions that were quite striking. Some of the costumes, mainly Gardner's clothing, was also eye catching. Thus, I was quite happy with this movie as a visual experience.

This was meant to be an ethereal, supernatural, great love fantasy. This gave Cardiff the freedom to stray from the ordinary to weave in his great shots. A far away fantasy is compatible with experimental photography, especially with color: a realistic story would be hindered by such photography. This is the advantage of this film to me. However, it is also a disadvantage; I do not particularly appreciate ethereal, supernatural, romantic fantasy I did like the over-the-top beginning with men throwing themselves at a disinterested Ava Gardner. While I realize that this was to set up her great sacrifice at the end, it was almost comedy. She was testing out the idea that love can be measured by what one was willing to give up for it. Apparently the numerous men in her life did not give up enough (including their lives) to interest her.. Yet, the men just kept coming begging her to marry them. It didn't seem to bother them that she was a very high maintenance gal to begin with and that she didn't disguise the contempt in which she held them. Oh, well. Gardner is pretty and has some unusual "come hither" looks, but why she was such a femme fatale escapes me.

She falls for James Mason. Why him? Well, he was immortal. This is ordinarily an advantage, but it is a disadvantage in this movie. She has to die so that he can die (and finds salvation). There is a lot of yadda yadda about this at the end. Talking about love never works well in the movies, but it works least well when the love is ethereal, supernatural, and not photographed in any special way in these scenes. On and on. Boring.

Still, this is well worth seeing if color and photography interest you.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

I came to Scoff

[11 May 2013]

I came prepared to scoff. I expected an over-the-top razzle dazzle Gatsby story after the previews I saw-in 3D yet. In fact, this was as good a filming of this classic book as has yet been done, and I believe, as good as can possible be done. There is a line in "The Last Tycoon" which says "you can't film great prose", but it is actually and literally done here.

This film starts out with a tongue in cheek style. The performers are doing comic book versions of their characters, but the plot continues and the movie gets quite serious and eventually even somber. This follows the emotional tone of the novel. As course there are differences between the novel and the film, primarily with the more subtle nuances of the novel, but this is a movie and subtlety doesn't work too well in big screen 3D spectaculars

BTW, Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker steals every scene she is in, even when she has no lines.

Go see it. If you are a "Gatsby" purist, you won't be disappointed.

Stromboli (1950)

Original Reviews Were Right

[15 March 2013]

When this first came to the USA, it had already garnered quite a bit of publicity because of Bergman's liaison with Rosellini. But the initial reviews were very bad. Those reviews were correct.

Seen today, the movie is a mush-mash. The voice of performers change in mid sentence. Continuity is amateurish. Bergman, the lead character seems to change her personality from scene to scene. Using real people as secondary characters may have seemed like a good gimmick when they were speaking a language not understandable to the audience, but when you hear them fumble with English and hear the risible dubbing, it is a major distraction,.

A Dangerous Method (2011)

yadda yadda sigh yadda yadda

[4/10 · 27 December 2012]

A lot of talk talk talk about psychoanalysis (origins, ideas, etc). If the viewer doesn't have a particular arcane interest in these century old dead on arrival ideas, there is nothing here to see. Most of this film might have some historical basis-but there is no way of knowing. The only evidence about these multitudinous conversations are later self serving statements from people none too trustworthy. Both Freud and Jung were notorious self promoters and each told some whoppers.

The story hook is supposed to be: here is insight into the origins of pychoanalysis. This isn't really done. The protagonists talk at one another, but the ideas don't progress much. The ideas themselves have long since been shown to be pseudoscience and tossed away. Jung, who was described in an "afterward" note as "The world's greatest psychologist', was neither great nor even a psychologist. His writing is sufficiently muddled and meandering that it gives some cultists a chance to project whatever they want into his inchoate ideas.

Sabina Spielrein was described in the afterward as having trained the USSR's most prominet psychoanalysts. Huh? Since psychoanalysis was banned in the USSR for most of the years she lived there and about 30 years after her death, this statement is ridiculous. Knightley's performance was good but she didn't have much to work with. Her hysteria quickly grew tedious (as do real histrionic behaviors) and it wasn't long before she, too, got into the Yadda-yadda contests.

Scenery nice. Good costuming. but boring.