mcpruden Reviews

MacArthur (1977)

MacArthur's hagiography

[10/10 · 26 October 2023]

This is the official American version of MacArthur's hagiography, justifyingly triumphalistic with nary a heartbreak that does not heal. It is also the version of colonial history that Filipino schoolchildren learn from the grades through high school and college.

It is all true, of course, and I love it. Gregory Peck is brilliant as the beloved General, mesmerizing with familiar, well-paced, inspirational, all-American soundbites.

Elsewhere across the Pacific, people wish the movie had made MacArthur a little more human than just a plastic saint. The General did not spend all his time in the Philippines in the battlefield, dealing exclusively with soldiers. He also had personal interactions with ordinary people that showed he really meant it when he said the Philippines was his "home." He participated in their festivities; forged close friendships with families of Philippine leaders; stood as godfather in a few baptismal ceremonies, and (after his divorce) maintained a long-running, if tragic, love affair with a Filipino woman. (One negligible blooper: When locating Leyte beach on the map, Peck actually points to Lingayen gulf.)

Formal biographies of national heroes are generally devoid of romance; so is this late MacArthur story. The General's wife has a very limited role. Same with "Ghandi," where the wife stays in the background.

Relationships with larger-than-life figures sometimes lead to disappointments, as when Filipinos in the post-war years realized Japan, the former enemy, was getting more nation-rebuilding benefits from the US than the equally war-torn Philippines, its soon-to-be released colony. It was the atom bombs, of course.

Appointment with Death (1988)

Just aweful!

[1/10 · 11 April 2023]

The characters are unbelievably stupid, improbable, and annoying. Four healthy, educated, grown-up children plus one daughter-in-law are set against a termagant, utterly vile stepmother... and they cannot win?!!

The story does not say if she raised them up from infancy, just that she treats them like servants and holds them hostage in their adulthood. She prevents them from socializing with anybody outside of the family, hollers at them in public and commands them when to come and when to go. As in the case of the youngest, (a 22-year-old) stepmother orders her to go into her room when it's bedtime. Daughter hated it, but she obeyed, anyway.

Okay, so the stepmother was once a prison warden and treats her spineless stepchildren like prisoners. But they are not behind bars, and it is only later, after their father's death and they are fully grown, that they suspect stepmother is trying to deprive them of their inheritance.

Still, what tied them down to her golden apron strings for so long? Did they ever have friends or a teacher in school? Relatives? Could they not have employed a lawyer, or called a social worker or the police? Any other group of children - rich or poor, educated or not - would have run away from parental abuse after they've grown up, but the children in this story do not. Even the oldest son, married to the stepmother's nurse, gets his wife into the clutches of the evil stepmother - so suffocatingly tight that all she can do is have an affair with the stepmother's lawyer.

When the younger son falls in love with a doctor whom he met on a rare family excursion, the doctor tries to see what is behind the children's cowardice but does not pursue it. The doctor is an intelligent, elegant woman, and of sterling character - it's unbelievable that she can fall in love with such a cowardly grown-up boy. The boy's sudden conversion toward a more responsible adult in the end is not convincing for its abruptness.

In one confusing scene, the doctor literally chases a young Muslim boy all over the streets of Jerusalem who was suspected of having murdered the stepmother. Until suddenly the boy was shot (by whom, we don't know) and killed. What was that long chase about? Sorry, by this time, I've lost interest and failed to understand.

The story also introduces a conflict between the stepmother and another haughty matron, but they are placed so far apart. So sparingly together in just one or two scenes - it never really ignites. Sadly, the conflict is supposed to be the denouement of the story, but instead turns out to be a sparkless mismatch between Piper Laurie and Lauren Bacall.

I love Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot and I love Jerusalem. But this particular Agatha Christi murder mystery is so embarrassingly awful.

Love Me or Leave Me (1955)

The Curious Romance of Ruth and Marty

[2/10 · 17 November 2022]

Doris Day did not have to convince me she could act. She could do both drama and comedy. She could do a sophisticated New York career girl, a western gunslinger and everything in between like no other Hollywood leading lady. Not to mention, she was THE topnotch female recording artist for many decades. So, I was determined to like this movie, especially since she's paired off with the awesome James Cagney in a tragic story. And I do like tragic stories.

But the overblown Cagney hysterics bring the movie crashing down. He just does not let up, not even for a moment. This one-note abrasive beast goes on and on and on, that no humanity, not even a pinch of pathos can touch him. Cagney gets pretty tiresome till the end, and yes, borrrrring!

Neither character is sympathetic in this curious romance between Ruth Etting (Doris Day) and Marty Snyder (James Cagney.) A woman who gives up her principles for the sake of her career finds herself a prisoner of that decision. A man who never lets her forget he made her a star, actually owns and tortures her.

Both Ruth Etting and Marty Snyder were still living when the movie about their relationship was made. Neither liked it. Etting was upset about the segment showing her drinking - she claimed she never drank. Snyder was very dissatisfied with the way Cagney portrayed him. And I can see why. Looking at his picture in Wikipedia, Snyder appears to be handsome and much younger than Cagney in the timeframe the movie portrays. With his numerous connections in the entertainment industry, he might have had at least a bit of suaveness that Etting must have found attractive at first, which Cagney absolutely dashed in the film.

Okay, so it is a fictionalized story, and maybe that was what's wrong with the film. The movie shows Etting with no affection whatsoever for Snyder. With her talent as a singer, she could have made it to the top on her own, without him as her brutish manager-promoter. Day portrays her as a strong woman, yet the story does not show why she sticks with the cruel and abusive gangster and even marries him after he rapes her.

A much more interesting story would have been the couple's divorce in real life. According to Wikipedia, Snyder kidnapped Etting's pianist-accompanist, Myrl Alderman (her second husband) at gunpoint and brought him to her house, where Snyder's daughter from his first marriage (Edith Snyder) also lived.

Snyder threatened to kill all three of them but shot only Alderman. Edith took Etting's gun and shot her father but missed. Edith said she tried to save her stepmother from being killed by her father. At a police reenactment of the scene, Edith Snyder wept as she said, "I don't yet know whether I am sorry I missed my dad or whether I am glad."

Now, THAT would have been the story. That would have been a more satisfying ending than Etting bailing out ex-husband, the monster Snyder from prison.

But that would probably cut out quite a few of the many, many (many!) Doris Day songs from the movie. I like Doris Day's songs, but too many of a good thing is bad in this insufferably long and repetitive film.

Two stars, for Cameron Mitchell who plays Alderman with depth and sensitivity and would have stood up more against the Cagney character had not the confused Doris Day character always prevented him.

Teacher's Pet (1958)

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

[2/10 · 3 November 2022]

A contest between the "university of hard knocks" kind of journalism and a formal "Bachelor of Literature major in journalism" degree is best played inside the newsroom, not in a classroom. For what matters, really, is whether the journalist can gather his facts straight and together, via research and leg work. Most of all, he should have the ability to write.

A journalist is a journalist when he practices his craft. A journalism teacher is really just a teacher.

In this movie, the Doris Day character insists that journalism is a profession. In my days, the definition of a profession was something that required a government license to practice, such as law or medicine. Thus, I agree with the Clark Gable character that journalists are mere craftsmen, not professionals.

I so wanted to love this film, especially since it's a comedy, because such had been a part of my life. Not very long time ago, I was a young female journalist, competing with men in the same field, with so many funny and amusing tales to tell. But this film is a downer from the start.

Hard-boiled, rough-and-tumble, gruff but charming male journalists, such as what Clark Gable endeavors to play in this film, are a given in the field and I have loved them as competitors, friends, and at least one lover. Women journalists eschewing the society and fashion pages could not be strung because they worked and fought as hard as the men in chasing scoops. Those were the pre-politically correct days and female journalists knew how to play the game without screaming, "rape."

The Doris Day character, in explaining why she has given up writing in favor of teaching, says it's because she wants to be the conductor instead of being just one of the musicians. It's a lame analogy. In my days, we had a better explanation: Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

Aesthetics, too, was a major consideration in a romance between journalists. They looked better together on an equal footing, i.e., both straight reporters, investigative reporters, opinion writers, or even feature writers. And preferably within the same age range. An old city editor romancing a staff member, much less, a young journalism instructor, was embarrassing. No wonder there was no chemistry between them.

Clark Gable making a pass at a young Doris Day, even while he pretends to be a student in her Journalism 101, violates this viewer's aesthetic sense. He should be ashamed of himself. Does not matter how brilliant an editor he is, Gable is nothing but a cringe-inducing, greasy DOM (dirty old man) making untoward advances on a young semi-virginal journalism instructor.

Two stars for Nick Adams as a cub and Day's opening song.

Second Chance (1953)

I couldn't stand her.

[1/10 · 24 October 2022]

She is being chased by an ugly, fearful man whom she has no connections with whatsoever. He is not a US government authority. He is not a Mexican police officer. He is not the boyfriend she is running away from. Yet she cannot - will not - shake him off? What's the matter with her?

She has plenty of opportunities to lose him. She can beg any market vendor to hide her under a table, behind a door, have her surrounded by dozens of little kids, have her buried in a basket of onions, drape her with curtains. She can scream for help, take off her high heels and hurl them at him, but she does not. She writes a lengthy telegram to be sent to someone in the US and does it in the open - on a very public counter, where she knows he will catch her. When he catches her and squeezes her tightly, a man notices it and asks what's the matter. Yet she refuses to tell; she refuses to ask for help.

Reviewers rave at the great scene toward the end of the story, when all lead actors are in a cable car up in the sky. But I simply can't afford to wait to see it, the great Robert Mitchum notwithstanding. I have to stop watching the movie, or I'll punch the screen. I am so disgusted with the stupid, stupid Linda Darnell character.

What a waste of time.

Vertigo (1958)

A Snake with Lipstick on

[1/10 · 5 September 2022]

I love San Francisco and its surrounding area. I've lived here, in "the City," for 35 years and it's great to see parts of it on screen: Flashes of Nob Hill and the Fairmont Hotel, Point Ford at the foot of Golden Gate Bridge, Lombard street, the Legion of Honor museum, and a full treatment of my beloved Mission Dolores and its ancient graveyard. This movie also takes you to Big Basin Redwoods north of the Golden Gate and to Mission San Juan Bautista and Cypress Point down in the Monterey peninsula. Vertigo does not disappoint as far as locations are concerned.

But the story and the main character (Jimmy Stewart) are something else. They're a cruel insult to the intelligence of decent humans.

Here's an old grandfather-type ex-detective on disability (Stewart) who falls in love and tortures a beautiful lady young enough to be his granddaughter (Kim Novak.) The "granddaughter" comes in two photographic positive-negative characters and is married to his friend (Gavin Elster) who has asked Stewart to keep an eye on her. In other words, babysit.

No matter how cleverly Alfred Hitchcock twists, turns, mutilates, powders, perfumes, and beautifies this horror of a story into a psychological-murder mystery-romance, it's still a snake with lipstick on. It goes up several notches on the horror scale when Novak's two characters separately fall in love with the gangly geezer. You would cringe every time they kissed.

The final insult is when the film tries to show us the Stewart character is actually an innocent victim, oh please! Sorry, but I never really like romantic adultery, even when dressed as psychological murder mystery.

The SF, et al. Locations are a sacrilege.

An Uncommon Grace (2017 TV Movie)

A very long child-bearing period

[7/10 · 10 May 2022]

Sean Faris and Jes Macallan were both born in 1982, therefore their characters, Levi and Grace in this movie, (released in 2017) would have been both 35-year-olds. If Levi were his mother's first-born, would she still be having a baby after 35 years?

I know that in some cultures, girls get married while still in their early teens, so it was quite possible Mrs. Miller had Levi when she was 15 or younger. But after 35 years, a period of widowhood, a second husband, and two small children later, she gave birth to her youngest. I don't know, but isn't 50 a bit too old to have another baby?

I like the movie very much; what with great characters, excellent cinematography, clever use of light-and-dark and color (you could almost tell what time of the day each scene happens), breathtaking landscapes, a rare look inside the Amish culture, and a cohesive storyline that incorporates both mystery and romance. On those points, movie is superb.

I would love to give it a higher than 7-star rating, but somehow, the matter of a post-menopausal mother giving birth to a baby bothers me.

Gabriel's Inferno: Part One (2020)

Ah, no!

[1/10 · 6 May 2022]

Sorry, it's just too pretentious and infuriating. The girl, supposedly a Harvard-bound graduate student working on her master's, looks and acts like a retarded 12-year-old. Cannot recommend.

Hmm, okay - one star because the guy is cute.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

A predatory, pathetic cougar.

[4/10 · 2 May 2022]

I couldn't stand her. I've never saw her in a movie before, but was that all of Gloria Swanson's mannerisms in real life? Bug-eyed, hateful, and horrifying?

How could anybody ever find her attractive, even Joseph Kennedy? And I don't mean the fictional Norma Desmond - I mean, Gloria Swanson, the supposedly late great movie star. Was she truly as ugly in person as in the movie?

At this point, I wish I could see how Glen Close portrayed Norma Desmond in the musical version. I bet she portrayed her as human - cruel, bombastic, etc., but human. Unlike this Gloria Swanson who was as ugly as the beast Desmond had to bury in a funeral ceremony early on in the story.

Every word Swanson uttered was an emotional declamation. I bet if she had had a line that says, "I am going to brush my teeth," it would sound like a warning on the end of the world. Overacting was hardly sufficient to describe her performance. She should have been told that movie goers even in her time were not as dumb as to beat them with her theatricals over the head.

Or maybe the trouble was not Swanson herself, but the character Norma Desmond, as disgustingly written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. If there were any feminists worth their salt out there, it was this denigrating stereotype of cougars and would-be cougars both in the movies and in real life that they ought to protest against.

It was the predatory Vivien Leigh's Blanche DuBois, all over again. In A Streetcar Named Desire, DuBois, without regard for her sister Stella's feelings, shamelessly flirted with her younger brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, played by Marlon Brando, ultimately accusing him of rape.

It was, again, the cringy older Anna Magnani's sex-starved and woebegone Lady Torrance in The Fugitive Kind, allowing herself to get pregnant to hold hostage her boy-toy Val, also played by Brando.

It was the suicidal Mrs. Stone (Vivien Leigh again!) in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, dangerously tossing her apartment's keys to an anonymous stalker, after her boy-toy Paolo (played by Brando wannabe, Warren Beatty) insulted and abandoned her.

There are many pathetic examples of cougars in real life, especially among celebrities with descriptions both libelous and barf-inducing, but let me give just one example, the very classless way the young Brando in his autobiography, denigrated the elderly Talulah Bankhead, his co-star in the stage play, "The Eagle Has Two Heads:"

"Whenever I was onstage with her and the moment approached when I was supposed to kiss her, I couldn't bear it... Her tongue would explore every cranny in my mouth before forcing itself down my throat... I tried eating a lot of garlic, but that didn't stop her, so I asked a stagehand to buy me a bottle of mouthwash, and after each time I had to kiss her, I went offstage and took a swig, but that didn't work either, so I bought a very strong astringent lotion and began gargling with it in the wings after every kiss."

Was there ever an older woman-younger man relationship in a play or movie, where the cougar was held in high esteem? Yes, there was. It was Jane Wyman in Magnificent Obsession, with a difference: Rock Hudson was no boy-toy in the movie. He was an honest and ardent younger lover who tried and succeeded on improving himself to be worthy of her love. Wish there were more of that kind of May-December where the woman was the May; if not, at least, the conventional desperate romance between an older woman and a younger man with its share of tenderness and pain, that would not scandalize.

Unfortunately, it was not so with Gloria Swanson and William Holden in Sunset Blvd. For one thing, William Holden was a bit too old to be a boy-toy. For another, Swanson just seemed to be the most horrid, most despicable and a more frightful cougar than the examples mentioned above.

But how could she have done better? Apparently, that was how the misogynists Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote Norma Desmond. No wonder quite a number of the old silent movie stars declined the part. They felt insulted by the role.

According to Wikipedia, Wilder first considered Mae West and Marlon Brando for the leads, but West rejected the offer out-right. West portrayed herself as a sex symbol through her senior years and was offended that she should be asked to play a Hollywood has-been.

Greta Garbo and Clara Bow were not interested. Norma Shearer found the script distasteful. Wilder and Brackett then visited Mary Pickford, but before even discussing the plot with her, Wilder realized she would consider a role involving an affair with a man half her age an insult, so they departed.

Way to go, late classy ladies!

Why four stars? Because everything else in the movie, except the Desmond character, was perfect. The innovative point of view of a dead man telling his story with occasional biting humor; the awesome cinematography and clever use of light and dark, the music score, the story development, the locations and props, the interactions of the supporting cast and fascinating cameos of actual old stars and directors were tops.

Furthermore, the handsome William Holden was at his greatest.

Romance on the Orient Express (1985 TV Movie)

Romance on the Orient Express vs. Reunion at Fairborough

[2/10 · 29 April 2022]

Unfortunately for this review, I have just finished viewing the Robert Mitchum-Deborah Kerr 1985 TV movie "Reunion at Fairborough" when I came upon "Romance at the Orient Express" starring Stuart Wilson and Cheryl Ladd and decided to view it. (I must have misread the title and thought it was a new version of an Agatha Christie mystery novel; I was awaiting the report of a murder at any time. I took a second look at the title and true enough, it's a romance, not a murder mystery.) Ha-ha!

Surprisingly, "Orient " and "Fairborough" have the exact same plot. It is the hackneyed template of across-the-pond lovers separated by unavoidable circumstances (a contractual marriage in Orient Express and the end of the war in Fairborough.) In the Wilson-Ladd romance, the man (Alex Woodward) is English and the woman (Lily Parker) is American. In the Mitchum-Kerr romance, the woman (Sally Wells Grant) is English and the man (Carl Hostup) is American.

Unbeknownst to the man in each story, during the long separation, the woman gave birth to his baby and singlehandedly raised it, so that there is much surprise when years later (about 40 years with the Mitchum-Kerr couple; 10 years with the Ladd-Wilson couple) they inadvertently meet again. But that's where the similarities end.

In the Wilson-Ladd romance, their baby, initially not shown in the film, is a nine-year-old girl given the feminine version of her father's name, Alexandra. In the Mitchum-Kerr romance, their baby (also not shown in the film) is a grownup wife and mother who died with her husband in an accident, leaving Mitchum and Kerr with a 19-year-old obnoxious granddaughter who is an annoying peace activist and dismissive of Americans.

I'm sorry to say, Romance on the Orient Express cannot even begin to hold a candle to Reunion at Fairborough. Aside from the sweet love between the young couple, there's very little substance to back up the story in Orient Express. Only the character of Susan Lawson as Ruby Wax gives it a small uplift but it's not enough. It shows Cheryl Ladd bitterly moping and moping and moping about something Stuart Wilson and this movie viewer could never fathom.

OK, I get it. The love-of-her-life a long time ago disappeared without a trace, leaving her to raise their daughter alone. But, lucky her (not all abandoned women have that fortune) he has come back, more loving than ever, extremely sorry for what had happened, consoles and comforts her, ready to endure whatever punishment she might want to deal him with, even makes love to her the way she had long longed for. Yet she cannot forgive and she continues to mope and mope. I'm sorry, because of her irritating endless moping, I stopped watching the film some way before the end.

Contrast that with the Deborah Kerr character (Sally Wells Grant) who receives her former lover with a cordial (courteous and friendly) wait-and-see attitude until she feels safe enough to rekindle the spark. She does it with real class and elegance that even in her old age, rekindling the romance is far from cringey. Moreover, Fairborough satisfies in many levels. The heartwarming reunion members of WWII bomb squadron provides a great back up to the story and their different tales of heartbreaks and triumphs give much substance to the film.

On the other hand, Romance on the Orient Express is a flat, slow-moving story, set in a fast-running train. Boring.