Reviews

Why does Paul Newman act so goofy and histrionic in this movie? Could it be the strain of having to use a "literary " or "upper class " accent to go along with his profession as a. Nobel Prize-winning author? He pops out his eyes, talks in a false voice and tries to act inebriated throughout. It's awful to witness.

It made for a long movie. Seemingly longer than its actual running time.

Newman who is one of my favorite leading men, really goes overboard in his acting style. He's supposed to be an American man of letters who has fallen on hard times writing detective novels rather than the literary stuff that won him a Nobel in the first place. He seems to think acting drunk means he has to use a British or Australian accent. It's crazy and really fails to meet the mark. If it was meant to be funny it isn't. If Lehmann and Robson are imitating Hitchcock or paying tribute to him--they fail miserably. And I blame Newman for it!

Thoroughly disappointing.

Theodor Geisel AKA Dr. Seuss was born and lived in Springfield Massachusetts and lived here in Western Mass. In the Forest Park section of the City of Homes (as Springfield is known).

Longo (James Franco) and Finkel (Jonah Hill) sau that he was born in Wisconsin. In fact, his first book "And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street) was his first book. This is the house that Geisel was born in, later the family moved to the Forest Park neighborhood until he left for Dartmouth and Oxford universities.

Geisel returned to Springfield in 1986 for the first time since he left as a high school graduate. I was a reporter who accompanied him on that trip.

We went to the house on Mulberry Street (surprising the current residents) and went upstairs to his childhood bedroom. There in the closet were some of his earliest drawings that were still on the walls--the beginnings of Grinch and Sneetches.

In a movie that is so wrapped up in the chaos of secrets and lies and mistakes (in fact Finkel was fired from the New York Times for his failure to fact check) how could they get something so easily checkable WRONG. I lost all faith in the movie from then on but because I'm a former journalist I watched the whole thing.

Really poor proofing; made the movie ridiculous.

Being a Daddy's girl myself, I was struck by the intimacy of the relationship between Rag and her father. Gather together all the family post-apocalyptic movies from The Road to A Quiet Place, Bird Box, even World War Z and you will never find a movie that so accurately portrays the bond between a girl and her dad in a world gone mad. I also have to mention the haunting soundtrack by Daniel Hart. Seeing that the world is without women due to a virus that pinpoints females, the dad (played by Casey Affleck, who also wrote, directed and produced this movie) treats his daughter in a tough but tender way. It made me long for my late father. The advice he gives her, the unique bond they have and their struggle to survive everything from rape, death and puberty is one of the most soulful depictions I have ever seen on screen. I never took my eyes off the screen and the night I watched it I dreamed of my father who died more than ten years ago. For that, I am incredibly grateful.

You'll need a shower after seeing this pre-Code jungle soap that features drug addiction, incest, juju, prostitution, murder and mayhem. Everyone is dripping with sweat and acting their dirty little hearts out. The plot tells it all--Walter Huston gets revenge on the man who crippled him by kidnapping the man's virginal daughter from a convent, shipping her to a Zanzibar brothel then caging her in his jungle hut for two years and addicting her to brandy. Now that's payback. The acting is out-of-this-world, including Walter Huston as "dead legs" the wheelchair bound, scar-faced revenge-seeker; Virginia Bruce as the captive; Lupe Velez as Huston (and everyone else's) jungle playmate; and Conrad Nagel as a drug-addled doctor who is "cured" of his addiction by Huston using a neat little detox technique that includes using swamp leeches to "purify" his blood. You get the idea...this film is whacko! I want to mention the cinematography by Harold Rosson. It is dark and dense just like the jungle in which It takes place. There is a great cut when we are first introduced to Bruce in a prim white suit in a clean convent: Cut to the next shot and Bruce is filthy, bruised, the suit is dirty and torn, her eyes are black with torture, drink and fear. It's a real shock and well conceived. Watch this movie if you get a chance. (But remember the portrayal of Africans is very racist, but typical of the times and only if you can ignore the white oppression and pidgin English should you view it.)

Yes, "The World Changes" is a Paul Muni vehicle, but the female cast steals the show even from him. (Frankly, I always find Muni a little hammy, but that's just me.) Watch for Mary Astor playing a snobbish social climber who is driven mad by her husband's rise in Chicago's meat-packing industry. Her character is a far-cry from "The Maltese Falcon" and other femme fatale parts she played in films noir. When she finally descends into insanity onscreen it is something to watch. Her "Bride of Frankenstein" hair falls crazily to her shoulders and her eyes are crazed and black as she pulls a Lady Macbeth on Muni and says she can "smell the blood" on him, on his clothes, on their lives. It's amazing.

Aline MacMahon as Muni's pioneer mother is also powerful in a role that is different from her usual comic turns or "best friend/buddy" parts.

Even Margaret Lindsay as a socialite who marries into the millionaire meat-packing family gives a good turn as she struggles with her snobbishness, her striving for her wastrel sons, and her extramarital affair during the Wall Street crash of '29. (When her husband shoots himself in the head in front of her because he has lost the family fortune, she picks up the phone to call her lover and frantically pleads with him to help her escape while her husband's barely cold body lies on the floor a few inches from her.) Yes, watch for the women. You'll enjoy them.

If it wasn't for Agnes Moorehead and the stark black-and-white cinematography, this odd little 70-minute film wouldn't have grabbed my attention. Not a big Laraine Day or Dane Clark fan, I watched "Without Honor" because of Moorehead and Franchot Tone. And I was right, they're the only good things about it. (Altho Tone is looking old and baggy eyed at this point in '49 and he's dispensed with in the first 20 minutes or so...) The entire picture is frantic like a daytime soap: Day is her usual crazy (as in lunatic) self, professing love for her paramour Tone; when he rejects her in favor of his wife (Moorehead) and kids she tries to stab herself and accidentally??? stabs Tone and hides him in the laundry room. Then comes the real melodrama: her brother-in-law (Clark) shows up and says he knows about the affair, has invited Tone and Moorehead to her house, as well as her husband (played by the square Bruce Bennett) and they're all going to have a little chat about cheating. (Meanwhile, as the stabbed and bloody Tone lies in the next room some Girl Scouts show up, the ice cream man cruises the neighborhood and Day runs around hysterical and hamming it up. Enough's enough. Turns out Tone's not dead after all, Clark is sexually jealous of his brother, and Bennett is willing to forgive and forget. In between there's a lot of face slapping and even an attempted suicide (slashed wrists by Day) that requires the bathroom door to be busted in.

Moorhead gives the only reasonable and real performance--letting Day know her husband is a serial philanderer, doesn't really love his "little girlfriends" including her, and that he'll always come back home and she'll always take him back.

This one is more "All My Children" than "All About Eve" but there's something very frantic and fast-paced and even funny about it. The last shot of Clark screaming for his brother in the middle of the road--all alone, his plans for revenge on Day shot to heck...as the words "THE END" appear on the painted white line of the highway--that ALMOST make this one a "so bad it's good" winner!

Not expecting much and knowing nothing about this film, I DVR'd it cause it was Caroll Baker Day on TCM. I have to agree with many of the previous reviewers it is a strange little film. The production is fabulous--'60s New York, grimy and gritty, pressing with people and poverty--the black-and-white cinematography is epic. It also has a documentary feel to it as apparently you can see it was shot on location. Baker is luminous but not in her "Baby Doll" way: as an innocent, sheltered schoolgirl she is smothered by an overbearing mother (a great Mildred Dunnock) and an indifferent step-father. Her ordinary and orderly, but unsatisfactory life, comes to a screeching halt when she is raped. I was amazed by the fact that this subject matter was tackled quite vividly in this 1961 film and that the rape scene was realistic, brutal and shocking. Rejecting everything in her life prior to the rape, Baker runs away--not only from her home, her school, and her parents--but from the rape itself; trying to erase everything that previously happened to her. She is unsuccessful and ends up suicidal on a bridge. There she is rescued by Ralph Meeker, playing a simple, perhaps devious?, Prince Charming, albeit in a basement apartment that he traps her in literally. Is he her savior or is he another rapist? The first three-quarters of this movie is really something special in terms of cinematography, writing, acting and directing. Unfortunately, the last few scenes really take a turn for the worst. Everything wraps up with a nice little bow and it just isn't true to the realism and psychological verite of the beginning. It's worth a look--particularly for the truth in Baker's performance, the truth about rape and the shame of reporting it, the truth of her fear of pregnancy and the unavailability of abortions at the time; but expect to be disappointed by the ending. Others have mentioned the Copland score and the direction by Garfein (Baker's then-husband) so I won't go into that. Watch it if you get the chance: it is a strange little film that deserves a wider audience.

Just a little simple advice: if you're in the mood for a movie about female obsession, skip Unforgettable and watch "Single White Female," or "Fatal Attraction" instead.

This is my shortest review ever and for good reason, Unforgettable (which is more like a made-for-TV" or Lifetime movie) doesn't deserve a single word more or a single moment of your time.

Elizabeth Taylor, fat and frazzled (and sporting a parade of Valentino muu-muus) is "gaslighted" by her seemingly adoring second husband, Laurence Harvey, and her loyal lifelong friend, Billie Whitelaw. (They are, of course, having an affair.) However, this hammily-acted melodrama can't surpass the film that gave the genre it's name, Gaslight, with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer; or Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder with Grace Kelly and Ray Milland. Not even close despite a great last-minute twist.

In the last 20 minutes, Taylor turns the tables on her tormentors and turns into a knife-crazed serial killer. She proves that she has been the mastermind behind this entire drive-her-mad plot, and she destroys the couple in lurid detail (still sporting a flowing lilac caftan, probably to match her famous eyes).

So put on your favorite music or read a good book, while the first part of Night Watch plays, but make sure to tune in for the last bit because it qualifies for the so-bad-it's-good list of movies.

Political and social themes aside, this movie can't be taken seriously on any level, and I have to laugh when my fellow reviewers delve into such weighty topics as China's one-child policy and world overpopulation. At best, this was a "made-for-TV" movie, abounding in cheap production values, a ridiculous plot and just plain BAD acting.

Let me say that I'm a big Noomi Rapace fan. From the Lisbeth Salander trio to Prometheus, I've always enjoyed her performances, and that's why I watched this movie in the first place. But this movie didn't show off her talent. She didn't seem to inhabit the characters in any real way--she put on a blonde wig for one, wore a pixie haircut for another, and used the old trope of a pair of eyeglasses to act "the smart one." I've enjoyed other "overpopulated dystopia" movies such as Children of Men, and even the first Hunger Games film. And The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu (as well as the Margaret Atwood novel) is one of my favorites.

But if you're looking for an entertainment that includes one actress play multiple roles at once, lots of action and political commentary on everything from eugenics to the IRA, try watching Orphan Black. I don't normally recommend TV shows on this site, but Tatiana Maslany does a superb job creating completely distinct characters/clones without resorting to elaborate prosthetics or old tropes. Sure she uses cornrows for one character and a blonde wig for another, but the central core of each one consists in her fulfilling performances--each original, individual, heart-breaking and realistic as they come to grips with their fates as the victims of a power-mad corporation that believes Eugenics will save the world.

As for "Monday" the premise is stale and cheesy, and the script and acting don't measure up. Try Elizabeth Moss as Offred in The Handmaid's Tale or Maslany in Orphan Black, and you'll want to delve into the real politics of overpopulation in the world today, because they make it so pressing.

The Neon Demon seems to be an unsuccessful attempt to animate the daring, scary and high-fashion photography of Helmut Newton from the 1980s. It seems to me that director Nicholas Winding Refn (who has the nerve to leave his monogram NWR throughout the opening and closing credits as though this film was his tribute to himself and his imaginary smoking jacket), fails miserably to enter the over-the-top, sexually tinged world of slick editorial and advertising fashion mags without a clue to its real inner workings or long-standing history and innovation. Just take a look at a Vogue from 40 years ago and you'll see more provocative images--women in bondage, strapped with saddles, sporting sleek prosthetic legs and arms--all the while in stiletto heels and designer clothes. That era, in a gorgeous, and highly controversial manner, broke all the rules in the fashion world. There's been no one like Newton before or since. Certainly not Winding-Refn. My guess is that NWR needed to do some research not just of the fashion world he tried so badly to recreate but of the movies that have dealt so longingly and beautifully with themes such as cannibalism, envy and eternal youth. Try the Hunger with David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve or even Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" that introduced us to paparazzi. Those films brought slick, disturbing yet hauntingly beautiful images on screen to create classics that still stand. The world of the Neon Demon has been one that photographers and cinematographers have depicted for decades yet this new film utterly fails to continue that startling tradition.