Reviews

This is the film that jumpstarted so many careers in Hollywood. For its day, it was extremely provocative utilizing showing full frontal nudity, adulterous situations and the like all in a small Texas town in the peak of the post-war years. If it wasn't for The Last Picture Show, then they never would have probably made American Graffiti.

The Last Picture Show is just a glimpse at a small slice of life in a small southern town. The town has its requisite share of crazy, kooky, oddball characters, but that doesn't make them any less appealing to the viewer. Timothy Bottoms plays Sonny Crawford, the story's moral center and one of the two male characters that the film is structured around. He has dalliances with the wife of the High School Football Coach as well as the town's number one "bad girl". It is Sonny's journey that we find ourselves on as we watch the story unfold.

The Last Picture Show was nominated for Eight Academy Awards including Best Picture. It received two statuettes, for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.

My rating: 1 star

Let's face it, if there was no Cool Hand Luke, there would be no Shawshank Redemption. It's as simple as that. For its day, Cool Hand Luke took plenty of risks in its depiction of the brutality of the southern-style work farm (an easier way to say Prison) and of a Chain Gang.

All the men here are rough and tumble, save for Paul Newman's Luke, a loner who was sent there for "busting the heads off of parking meters" as he so eloquently puts it. He is thrown into this pile of self-effacing, self-deprecating men with only his own standards and basic moral code to help him stay aloft, but of course they all want to break him and will use any means by which are available to them to do so. In every prison film that you see, the man (or woman) in prison always believes that he (or she) doesn't belong there. That is also true for Luke, however we never hear him utter one word of contempt towards his captors at all. Instead he tries to show his fellow inmates and "bosses" the human side of a man. But, when all hope appears to be gone, Luke attempts to do the next best thing. I won't tell you what that is, you have to see the film for yourself to understand it.

Cool Hand Luke was nominated for four Academy Awards (Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Score) with George Kennedy winning Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of "Dragline", the self-appointed leader of the inmates who shows Luke a thing or two about life in captivity.

My rating: 3 stars

Ok, The Godfather. For some, this is the film of a lifetime. But not for me. Now that I've seen the film twice in its entirity, I still am left to wondre just what the big deal is about this film. Granted the performances and the casting was quite powerful for its day, but still as much as this film has held itself up over time, on my top one hundred list, this one goes somewhere in the low 70's.

If there were any redeeming qualities about this film it would be the screenwriter's ability to create a script from an already existing body of work and turn it into a living breathing thing as Mario Puzo has done here. The script is so finely nuanced and fine-tuned that at times as the story unfolds it as if we are watching a great symphony orchestra play. The different plot-lines and instances just sweep over us.

The Godfather is not a film for children to see at all. Yes, it is a film about an Italian family in the mafia, but still it is a very "talky" picture. There is gratuitous violence that abounds within it but, it is so deftly plotted that it doesn't really stick itself out there like it was just put in the film just to be in it. The film goes from one end of the spectrum to the other. In one scene, these people are sitting over a nice dinner that's spread before them, in the next people are lying there with blood spilling out of their brains. In this film, there is no happy medium to be found at all. Marlon Brando gave the performance of the year in 1972 but, however I still think his best performance of his career was 1951's A Streetcar Named Desire.

The Godfather was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning three (Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay). Bob Fosse beat Francis Ford Coppola that year for his landmark direction of the film version of the musical Cabaret.

So, all in all, you either love this one or you hate it. My question is: What's the big deal? It's a film!

My rating: 2 stars

The time is the mid-1950's and we find ourselves within the hallowed walls of a New England Prep School enclave: Welton Academy. Robin Williams turns in his finest dramatic performance of his career with this film as English Professor John Keating. Although his teaching methods and most of his ways are unorthodox, Keating fires up his students by making them defy conventionality and actually begin thinking for themselves and not for how others see them. Without giving too much of the film away, it is a tearjerker but you also stand up and cheer at certain moments. It is a heartfelt slice of American Cinema History.

Dead Poets Society was nominated for four Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay) winning for Best Original Screenplay, losing Best Picture to Driving Miss Daisy. Robin Williams lost the Best Actor Award to Daniel Day-Lewis as Christy Brown in My Left Foot.

My rating: 4 stars

1930

Prohibition has turned Chicago into a city at war. Rival gangs compete for control of the city's billion dollar empire of illegal alcohol, enforcing their will with the hand grenade and tommy gun. It is the time of the gangsters...it is the time of Al Capone.

With this title card, Brian DePalma's grand opus to the era of Prohibition begins. The Untouchables tells the story of Elliot Ness, the man responsible for bringing Al Capone to his knees and finally to justice. Kevin Costner, in one of his many "dry as a bone emotionally" roles plays Ness as a passive-aggressive monster. At times, when he is without a tommy gun in his hand, Costner's Ness becomes as soft as a newborn puppy dog. When he is with the police force he is almost maniacal in his attempt to eradicate Al Capone from the streets of the world in total. For this reason, I give DePalma kudos for casting Costner in this role. He is just like a whute blob upon the screen in every scene he appears in, forcing those actors and actresses around him to pick up the cues and carry on without him, almost as if he isn't there to begin with.

Backing up Costner, De Palma cast some of the most veritable actors in the cinema canon to be his cohorts: Robert DeNiro, Andy Garcia and Sean Connery. It was with his role as Malone, the trenchant Irish cop that Connery finally snagged his first Academy Award. Some of his scenes within this film to me are reasons why he won the award to begin with!

As a film in general, the Untouchables reaches for the gold, blazing out of the gate only to stumble upon reaching the finish line. Even a screenplay by Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist David Mamet couldn't begin to save this film which on its own merit has some very good sections. It is almost as if the film staggers about from one bloodshed to another, only gathering steam towards the ending.

The Untouchables is of course, based on the classic television series starring Robert Stack. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards (Best Supporting Actor, Best Set Decoration, Best Costume Design and Best Score), winning only for Best Supporting Actor.

My rating: 2 and a half stars

Of course, when Amadeus came out in the theaters, it was hailed as a triumph on just about every level. It followed the prototype of big, splashy epic-like films of the early to mid-1980's (Gandhi, Out of Africa, Chariots of Fire) but this one was a bit different from all the others. Not only was it a film about a real person, the back-bone of the film itself was its music. And what glorious music it is!

Amadeus was based on the stage play of the same name by British playwright Peter Shaffer. It opened in New York in 1980 and starred Tim Curry as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It won the 1980 Tony Award for Best Play and so it would only be a matter of time before Hollywood would come to call. Everything about the life story of Mozart cries out to be told in a grand epic-like film style and structure. From the origins of Mozart's travails as he attempts to be Court Composer to Emperor Joseph the II of Austria to the writing of what some consider his finest work, the Requiem mass, it's all here. Of course, as we all (should) know by now, much of Amadeus as both play and film is highly fictionalized. Shaffer does a grand thing by having us want to believe the fact that Antonio Salieri actually kills Mozart, but in the end it is up to our imaginations to wonder if we are seeing the truth or not.

Recently, the Director's Cut was released with an additional twenty minutes of footage cut from the original (1984) release. If anything, the newly recovered footage draws out the story, but it also puts a bit more meat onto the bones of the life of whom many people think is the world's greatest composer of classical music. We leave the theater (or the couch) feeling sated in our quest but always wondering could it have been true...or is this merely a great fiction just sculpted to look as if it was meant to be true.

Amadeus was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning eight including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Set and Costume Design, Best Sound and Best Makeup. It was also nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing.

My rating: 3 and a half stars

For as many times as I've sat through this film, it never ceases to always cheer me up. To think that a film made close to forty years ago can still do that is simply amazing. Billy Wilder made this film coming hot off the heels of a another smash hit, the immortal Some Like It Hot. For its day, The Apartment took plenty of risks with its storyline: marital infidelity, chauvanism, attempted suicide and the like. Jack Lemmon plays the first of what would ultimately become the comic "everyman" role that he'd be so pigeonholed in later, the role of a overworked and underpaid corporate businessman who lends his bachelor pad out to the fellows in the office so they can "score" with their "dates" and he can "score" with a promotion. Even though this film is classified as a comedy, I still come to see it as a "black" one at that. I don't want to give too much away, but if you can make it past the dated-ness and the somewhat drabness of the sets and color, you will surely enjoy it! After all, when Sam Mendes was filming American Beauty in 1999 he cited The Apartment and Billy Wilder as one of his inspirations for that film, so you know that this just has to be good!

The Apartment was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning five including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Jack Lemmon lost the Oscar to Burt Lancaster's portrayal as fiery evangelist Elmer Gantry and Shirley MacLaine lost the Oscar to Elizabeth Taylor's portrayal as wanton sex kitten Gloria Wandrous in Butterfield 8.

All in all, this is a wonderful example of a film from an America that was just poised to come into the Kennedy era, an era that we can now look back on and see the mirror (and our illusions of that great and magical time) as shattered in itself.

My rating: 4 stars

The Graduate is a total time capsule of a era that is by-gone. From the opening shot of Dustin Hoffman sitting on the plane as it descends into the haze of Los Angeles to the final scene of the bus pulling away from the church with Benjamin and Elaine looking dumbstruck on the rear seat, this film is a true American classic.

Symbolism runs rampant throughout the film, most notably in the case of young Benjamin Braddock. This film encapusulates just what teenagers and young adults at the time were certainly feeling. No one understood them and they sometimes had to go to certain places to "find themselves". In Benjamin's case he goes to the immortal Mrs. Robinson, played here by Anne Bancroft. She becomes his teacher in a way and teaches him some things that one certainly couldn't learn in a school environment! I don't want to give too much of the film away because that is half of the fun of seeing it. It is a treat.

My rating: 4 stars

In 1937, Columbia Pictures optioned Lewis R. Foster's original screen story, "the Gentleman from Montana." The studio's ace director Frank Capra, read a one page synopsis and passed on the project. Columbia then sent the story to Rouben Mamoulian, who agreed to make the film. Upon hearing this, Capra reread the synopsis, changed his mind, and offered Mamoulian Golden Boy for the property.

On August 10, 1938, Columbia announced the project as Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington with Gary Cooper reprising his Longfellow Deeds character. Months later, Samuel Goldwyn, with whom Cooper had an exclusive contract, decided not to loan out the actor to Columbia. Capra recast the film with his star of You Can't Take It With You, James Stewart.

The film was renamed Mr. Smith Goes to Washington on January 26, 1939. Production began on April 3. While some location work was done in Washington, the majority of the film was done at Columbia's Gower Street studio. The major set piece was an exact replica of the Senate Floor, built by art director Lionel Banks at a cost of $100,000. It was here, over the course of four weeks, that Stewart performed the climactic filibuster scene. To give his voice the proper hoarseness, Stewart had his throat painted repeatedly with a mercury solution. Production was completed on July 7, 1939.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington had its world premiere in the nation's capital on October 19, 1939. Every senator and representative was invited to the screening, as well as the Washington Press Club. Depicted as drunks and theives, they denounced the film as un-American. More controversial was the offer by several sister studios to buy the negative and destroy it, fearful that the Axis powers would use the film for propaganda reasons. Studio president Harry Cohn refused and proceeded to distribute the film across the country.

Although critics and audiences loved Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, it was an extremely expensive film to make ($1.5 million), and only broke even on its intial run. But Harry Cohn didn't make the film for profit, he made it for prestige. And that's what Capra gave him. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington recieved eleven Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor (Claude Rains, Harry Carey), Best Music, Best Sound, Best Editing, Best Art Direction, and Best Screenplay (original story) --- winning in the latter category. A timeless populist masterpiece, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is, was and always will be "one of the best shows of the year."

Mr rating: 4 stars

In Summer 1933, Columbia Pictures paid $5000 for the rights to "Night Bus," a short story written by Samuel Hopkins Adams that appeared in the August issue of Cosmopolitan. After completion of Lady for a Day, director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin began work on the film adaptation; as several bus-related films had recently failed at the Box Office, they changed the title to It Happened One Night.

Columbia Pictures, a small studio with few stars under contract, made it a company policy to borrow exspensive brand-name talent "as needed." So when Capra wanted MGM's Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy for It Happened One Night, Columbia's president, Harry Cohn, sent the script to their boss, Louis B. Mayer. Althuogh, both stars were unavailable, Mayer surprised Cohn when he insisted that Columbia take MGM's top leading man, Clark Gable, instead.

With Clark Gable confirmed as reporter Peter Warne, Capra turned his attention to casting the Ellie Andrews role. After Miriam Hopkins, Margaret Sullivan and Constance Bennett turned him down, Capra approached Paramount's Claudette Colbert, who didn't want to play the heiress either. Instead of saying no, however, the actress made Capra an offer she was sure would be rejected: $50,000 for four weeks work. To Colbert's amazement, Cohn agreed to her terms.

Production of the $325,000 project began on November 13, 1933. Although Clark Gable was initially reluctant to work on It Happened One Night, he warmed up to Capra, and gave a charming performance, one that would forever cement his screen image as a breezy, good-natured man of the world. Claudette Colbert however was another story. Although she too gave a winning performance, the actress did not want to make the film and continued to give Capra a hard time throughout production.After her scenes were completed, Colbert went on vacation to Sun Valley, where she told friends, "I've just finished the worst picture in the world."

It Happened One Night was released on February 23, 1934, to moderate to indifferent reviews. But audiences across the country adored the film and made it the sleeper hit of the year. The first screwball comedy, It Happened One Night, went on to sweep the Academy Awards, winning all five major Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director (Frank Capra), Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Actress (Claudette Colbert), and Best Screenplay (Robert Riskin). But it was Claudette Colbert who knew exactly who was responsible for It Happened One Night when, after accepting her award, she graciously told the Academy, "I owe Frank Capra for this." She did and so do we.

My rating: 3 stars

For what it's worth, this is just a cute film. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan blend well. For the most part, we want to see them meet and get together. I don't want to give too much away, but if you haven't seen this film yet and I'm sure most people already have, then do so. It is your traditional sappy Romantic Comedy, but it was written well and acted well. After making this film, Hanks and Ryan teamed up a few years later for You've Got Mail, a pathetic attempt to recapture their glory of Sleepless.

My rating: 3 stars

This film has to be the best romantic film that I've ever seen, even above Gone With the Wind, and Casablanca, but on the same level as The English Patient (my favorite film of all time). After I saw Sleepless in Seattle when I was in high school and caught the many references to this film, I decided to check it out for myself. Needless to say, with the whole "shipboard romance" aspect of it, and the promise to meet again in six months atop the Empire State Building of all places, I quickly became hooked. The scene that takes place on the French Riviera with Nickie's grandmother playing the piano, oh God is it beautiful! Cary Grant is so debonair and suave and Deborah Kerr is so ravishing and stunningly beautiful, that it always demands repeated viewings from me (at least twice a year).

Seeing this film always makes me wonder if something like the kind of relationship describes within this film would actually BE possible in real life. Would and could someone actually leave the person they were engaged to in order to marry a complete and total stranger they just met days ago? I'd like to think that it could, but then again I am nothing but a hopeless romantic. The final scene always tears my heart out no matter how many times I've seen it. I'm always sobbing. Watching this film around the fourteenth day of February (even if you are single) is always a treat. It allows our fantasies to take wing so that we may think we are actually the one meeting our beloved atop the Empire State Building in a thunderstorm.

Watch this film with a box of industrial-strength kleenex nearby.

My rating: 4 stars

Why people ended up putting Lawrence of Arabia as number five on the American Film Institute list of 100 greatest films I will never understand. I figured it should have gone somewhere down in the low seventies. David Lean attempted to do too much with this story and it shows with how much I get confused by it whenever I watch it. I saw it at a small "art house" last fall for the first time ever and was really looking forward to it. However, when I arrived I found out that the screen was three sizes too small to show a film of this magnitude on and that the seats were enough to give anyone serious leg cramps! As a result my enjoyment and appreciation of the film itself was severely diminished. Just recently, I watched it again on DVD and was STILL confused by it. Although, the panoramic vistas and clear digital picture were enchanting enough to enjoy the film somewhat.

Lawrence of Arabia was nominated for ten Academy Awards winning seven of them (Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Set Decoration, Best Score, and Best Sound). It lost in the categories of Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor.

My rating: 2 stars

George Cukor hit the jackpot with this lovely story of three different people torn apart and brought together by love. This was the film that brought Katherine Hepburn back into the limelight after being labeled as "box-office poison". Although the story is easy to follow, the plot at times gets a bit contrived and we find ourselves wondering if "normal" people would actually do such things as these people in this film do. But of course, by the end of the film the conflict is resolved and all ends happily...or does it?

The Philadelphia Story was nominated for six Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Direction and Best Screenplay) winning two: Best Actor and Best Screenplay. James Stewart won the only Academy Award of his distinguished career for this film. Katherine Hepburn lost to Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle, George Cukor lost to John Ford for his inspired direction of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and the film itself lost to Alfred Hitchcock's American directorial debut, Rebecca.

My rating: 2 and a half stars

If anything, The Shawshank Redemption is just a great film, you cannot even begin to disagree with that. It is well written and very believable. This is one of the few films in the history of American Cinema that needs to be as long as it has to be in order to tell the whole story to its audience. As we watch this film, it is almost as if we are watching a great artist create a new canvas giving it color, texture and varying hues. By the time we are through with the film, we can be assured that we have just sat through what is almost nearly an epic, in size, depth and length.

Morgan Freeman, the film's narrator, plays the role of Red with an almost patent sincerity that is hard to pull off most of the time. Tim Robbins' Andy Dusfrene is the film's "pretty boy", always looking on the bright side of anything, which when you are in a place that is as bleak as a prison can be quite tough. The two pull off a symbiotic relationship that far transcends the boundaries of the film itself. This is a "buddy film" but quite a different kind. Red and Andy play off each other well enough, and it is worth it just to watch the film for that reason alone.

The Shawshank Redemption was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Morgan Freeman was nominated as Best Actor, losing to Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. It lost Best Adapted Screenplay to Forrest Gump. It lost Best Cinematography to Legends of the Fall. It lost Best Film Editing to Forrest Gump, lost Best Sound to Speed and lost Best Original Score to Disney's The Lion King. Of course, The Shawshank Redemption lost the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1994 to Paramount's juggernaut mega-hit Forrest Gump.

My rating: 3 and a half stars

As you watch Elmer Gantry you quickly realize just one thing: how dated this film is! Not to say that it is a bad film because it isn't, but it also isn't a great film. Everything about this film was done in extremes, most notably the two main characters. Burt Lancaster's Elmer Gantry and Jean Simmons' Sharon Falconer come at life from two totally different perspectives, but the two are almost dead even in their religious fervor and deep convictions. I for one do not believe that no matter how hard he tried, Elmer Gantry could not win over Sister Sharon as easy as he did. The film boasts a superior main cast of actors from the 1950's and early 1960's who are no longer with us: most notably Dean Jagger and Arthur Kennedy. The one drawback to this film is its length, but the again most films from this period were close enough to two and a half hours in duration. But, like any great film, the climax of this one surely packs a punch! Religious allegory runs rampant through this, especially in the final scenes.

Elmer Gantry went into the 1960 Academy Awards ceremony with five nominations, including Best Picture. The film won three Academy Awards: Best Actor (Burt Lancaster), Best Supporting Actress (Shirley Jones), and Best Writing/screenplay (Richard Brooks). It lost the Best Score Award to Exodus and the coveted Best Picture Award to Billy Wilder's The Apartment.

My rating: 3 stars

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a throwback to a simpler time when the world was calmer, life was simpler and people went to the movies simply for the enjoyment of it all. From the ribald opening number, "(We're just) Two Little Girls from Little Rock" to the ultimate tour de force performance of Miss Monroe in a sheer pink creation belting out her trademark "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend", we as a film audience are in for a major treat. Although this film was touted as a musical, it really isn't, with only five musical numbers to speak of.

Even though this is Marilyn Monroe's "signature" film, Jane Russell upstages her in almost every scene that they're in together. The cameraderie between the two women was evident in almost every scene that they appeared in. Also, this film seems to follow a precedent for a lot of films from the mid to late 1950's that were set on transatlantic ocean liner voyages, the other notable one being 1957's An Affair to Remember. Frankly, that is one of the reasons that this film is such fun to begin with.

For an enjoyable, lighthearted, carefree romp, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is surely hard to beat.

My rating: 4 stars

This is one of the best romantic films of all time (in my opinion). Julia Roberts gave an Academy Award-nominated performance (she lost to Kathy Bates in Misery) as carefree prostitute Vivian Ward to Richard Gere's iconic portrayal of business executive Edward Lewis.

Everything about this film, from the smallest detail, is just priceless. The script has more memorable one-liners and classic moments than the entire nine season run of the Golden Girls. For instance, can anyone that's seen this film ever forget Vivian's shopping excursion (with Edward in tow), the day at the Beverly Hills Polo Grounds or especially the night at the opera?

This is a true classic of a film for anyone who's a hopeless romantic.

My rating: 4 stars

If anything, watch this movie for the treasure that it holds within it: the first on-screen pairing of the immortal team of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. However, that is the one and only reason TO watch this George Stevens classic bomb of a film. The script was very dull and stilted, and yet the best part about the film was Katherine Hepburn herself. She simply lights up any scene that she appears in. Overall, this film is a definitive social commentary on the times in which it was made: the early 1940's.

This film was nominated for two Academy Awards. Katherine Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress (but lost to Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver) and won for Best Original Screenplay, though I can't understand why.

My rating: 1 star

"I want to tell you of William Wallace. Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes..."

And so, with a beginning that is eerily reminiscent of The Sound of Music, Mel Gibson's medieval epic unfolds...slowly. We must watch it for at least forty or so minutes before the first major "battle scene" but as we are soon to discover, the wait is well-worth it...and gory as well. Braveheart is a gargantuan film that tries to be an epic...and barely succeeds. At times, the film becomes unwieldly, simply lumbering along awaiting the next "battle sequence" (there are four in all). The performances are mostly top-notch, especially Patrick McGoohan's portrayal of Longshanks, the evil English king who is so desperate to destroy William Wallace and everything that he stands for. Braveheart has something for both sexes, but it would be the men who would leave the theater well sated. There is more blood in this film than in the first three seasons of ER alone!

Braveheart swept the 1995 Academy Awards winning 5 trophies, including the coveted Best Picture Award. It also won for Best Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Make Up and Best Sound Effects Editing. It was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Sound and Best Dramatic Score. It is interesting to note that this was the film that started the mid-90's trend of Academy Awards going to "epic-like" films, as the next two films that would be honoreed as Best Picture would be The English Patient and Titanic, respectively.

If anything, you come away from this film feeling revitalized. For it was William Wallace himself, a real man, who inspired thousands of his countrymen to fight for their own freedom. And that one message is powerful enough in itself.

My rating: 3 stars

Billy Wilder's classic comedy The Seven Year Itch is a total sex farce, however there is no sex in it whatsoever. The Seven Year Itch blew the lid off of 1950's stodgy conservatism, shocked audiences with its irrereverant view of marital infidelity and showcased the late, great Marilyn Monroe in her most sexually suggestive role to date (at the time the film was released).

Of course, the premise of the story is simple (without giving too much away). A married man is alone for the summer while his wife and son are off on vacation and is "tempted" (for lack of a better word) by his voluptuous upstairs neighbor. Hijinks and hilarity ensue when Richard Sherman discovers that he, himself is the victim of none other than the infamous Seven Year Itch!

I think that the greatest thing that this film has going for it is the interplay between its stars, Marilyn Monroe and Tommy Ewell. Of course, Marilyn is her normal self in this one and gives yet another trademark performance, but this one however transcends the boundaries of just a "normal" role and shoots her star into the celluloid heavens where it remains to this day. If Gentlemen Prefer Blondes made her a star then the Seven Year Itch just confirmed it and allowed her star to shine even brighter than ever before. In this film, Marilyn plays the role of "the Girl", someone who is never named but who plays the role of the "innocent" girl next door to the hilt, but has a touch of tempstress within her still.

What's so funny about this film is the mannerisms in which it gets played. They're always a tad to the extreme but seem never to get taken over the top too much. As always with a Billy Wilder script, the dialog crackles with certain one-liners ("Rachmaninov makes me goose-pimply all over") and an impeccable writing style that only Wilder was able to pull off.

In closing, this was THE film with the now-famous/trademark subway grate scene which was the impetus for Marilyn and Joe DiMaggio's divorce. Some people have said it was inevitable, but as Marily herself had said once "they're not in love with Norma Jean, they're in love with her(Marilyn Monroe)." And we as an audience still are...over fifty years later!

It's true what they say...some things DO improve with age.

My rating: 3 stars

Bette Davis was always quite good at playing despicable women, and here is no exception. In William Wyler's adaptation of Lillian Hellman's great American drama, Davis plays Regina Giddens, a shrewd, manipulative woman who is willing to go to any lengths whatsoever to achieve her goal. In this case, it's outwitting her brothers in order to be able to control the family's cotton mill (the story takes place in the south at the turn of the century mind you)--- even if it means sacrificing the health of her already ailing husband, Horace or the love of her young daughter Alexandra.

The Little Foxes was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress, two nominations for Best Supporting Actress, Best Direction, Best Score, Best Screenplay, Best Film Editing and Best Set Decoration. The film lost to John Ford's How Green Was My Valley and Bette Davis lost out to Joan Fontaine in Suspicion.

Bette Davis gives a cunning performance in this film, but the seeds are sown here for greatness in what's to come, most notably films like Now, Voyager and All About Eve. She commands the screen in every scene that she appears in and proves here for the first time that she is a force to be reckoned with.

My rating: 2 stars

As a film of the 1940's, The Grapes of Wrath does a wonderful thing. It shows us humanity in only the way that someone like John Ford could show it. Primarily known as a director of westerns, Ford helms this project with all the love and care you'd expect from someone entrusted with such a great and monumental classic work of American Literature as this is.

Even seen as a bit dated by today's standards, this film harkens back to a time in American History when the Government was literally throwing people off their land just so they (the government) could have more and more room for argriculture and farming purposes. So, the Joad family like millions of other families in the midst of the Great Depression flees westward to California. They do this simply because they believe that work, not to mention a better life will be found there. However, once they arrive in California the Joads begin to see just how wrong they were with so many of their assumptions.

This has to be the defintive Henry Fonda performance. Fonda plays Tom Joad with sort of an everyman type of quality. However, Fonda lost the Best Actor Oscar to James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story. The Grapes of Wrath recieved two statuettes that year, Best Supporting Actress for Jane Darwell's iconic portrayal of Ma Joad, the undeviating strength at the core of the Joad clan and Best Director for John Ford (his second Oscar after 1935's The Informer). The Grapes of Wrath was also nominated in the categories of Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing and Best Sound Recording, losing in all three instances. The film lost Best Picture to Alfred Hitchcock's suspense masterpiece Rebecca.

All in all, this is an important piece in a director's legacy of great films. John Ford would follow The Grapes of Wrath with 1941's Best Picture winner How Green Was My Valley (another Best Director statuette) and his 1952 homage to his homeland of Ireland, The Quiet Man (yet another Best Director statuette). But his film career would be crowned later still with what many consider his greatest achievement, 1956's The Searchers with John Wayne, Natalie Wood and Ward Bond.

My rating: 2 and a half stars

When Bringing Up Baby premiered in 1938, the film seemed to break all the rules. It combined Katherine Hepburn, who had never done an out and out comedy before, with Cary Grant, who was known for his debonair leading man roles. But director Howard Hawks struck casting gold and set out to make Bringing Up Baby the screwiest comedy ever made. The stars barely had time to catch their breath as they raced from one wild situation to another.

When production was finished, RKO felt the film was too frenetic for audiences. In fact the studio considered shelving it altogether. When RKO finally released Bringing Up Baby into theaters, the film lost over $300,000. Hawks was fired from his next scheduled film, Gunga Din and Hepburn bought out her RKO contract and returned to Broadway.

However, with the coming of television in the 1960's and the advent of VCR's in the 1980's, Bringing Up Baby finally found its audience. The film quickly won a reputation as one of the funniest movies ever made and became known as the quintessential screwball comedy. In 1990, Bringing Up Baby was selected for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as one of the most important films in American cinema history.

I could never understand what was so great about this film. I think that the acting is poor and the storyline is quite weak, if not believable. What is the big deal with this film? Maybe I just need to see it more...or maybe I've seen it enough. Who knows?

My rating: 1 star