Category: Movies

Note: This is #33 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Well, hello John Wayne. Nice to see you here in your cowboy hat. I’ve heard a lot about you. Care to swagger around and punch somebody out after delivering some pithy one-liner?

No? Well, in fact The Searchers is a lot more serious and epic for a western than I might have expected. It tells the story of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), a retired Civil War soldier who moves in with his brother and his family. When a raid by Comanche warriors leaves most of that family dead and two of Ethan’s nieces abducted, he joins a search party along with his nephew Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) and a posse of local law enforcement types. Thus begins an epic story that spans the years-long search for one surviving niece, Debbie.

What I liked about The Searchers was how it dealt with many mature themes inhabiting many shades of gray. Ethan Edwards is not a typical white hat hero like in Shane. Indeed, right from the offset you get the impression that he’s not particularly intent on retrieving his abducted niece alive, and would be fine with her being killed as long as it meant an end to her captivity by the Comanches. This forms the central source of dramatic tension between Ethan and Debbie’s brother, Martin, and it culminates in a genuinely tense scene at the end of the movie.

The movie also deals directly and honestly with the issue of racism between the white settlers and the Comanches, but what’s doubly interesting is that it looks at the issue from the side of the Native American characters as well. They’re clearly villainous (what with all the murder, rape, and kidnapping), but it’s also made clear that they have compelling reasons for hating their White enemies. It’s also somewhat startling here in 2009 to see the movie’s supposed hero be so overtly racist against the Comanches –almost as startling as it was to be confronted with the root causes of that hatred.

So, the whole movie is thoughtfully done and presents you with several interesting moral quandaries, and it doesn’t hurt that at one level it’s also an exciting adventure story full of action and drama.

Note: This is #32 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Rear Window (the first of several Alfred Hitchcock flicks in this experiment) is another one of those movies that has permeated popular culture to such a degree that I felt I was already familiar with it before I even popped the disk in. In keeping with great Internet Nerd traditions I considered writing my opinion about it before actually watching it, but I’m glad I didn’t. Turns out, I had the whole thing wrong, especially the ending.

The story involves L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart), a professional and perhaps overly adventurous photographer recovering from a broken leg. Jeffries has apparently never heard of books or the television, because he passes all his time sitting in a wheelchair and spying on his nearby neighbors through windows thrown open due to the summer heat. When Jeffries thinks he sees evidence that one of his neighbors has committed murder, he convinces his girlfriend and nurse that he’s right, but the local authorities are more skeptical. Things come to a climax when the trio takes things into their own hands.

From what I’ve read, this is supposedly one of Hitchcock’s most thrilling and suspensful movies, but honestly I really don’t get it. It’s interesting and compelling the way that the clues are doled out and it has some really interesting things to say about how people connect (or fail to connect) with their neighbors in a modern, urban setting and instead tend to objectify them. The former is all the more relevant today given how people connect through the Internet and related technology but rarely know the people living across the street from them. If someone were to remake this movie today for some reason they could really run with that theme. But was the movie suspensful? Not really. Not until the very end and only then for one scene.

But speaking of the end, I had it totally wrong –I thought I knew something about the presumed guilt of the supposed murderer, but I was mildly befuddled when the credits rolled and I figured out that I had been wrong all the time. I imagine that might have colored my viewing of things, and that if I had been closer to a true first-time viewer things might have been more suspenseful. Maybe.

Note: This is #31 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

More Marlin Brando doing his Marlin Brando thing. And you know what? It ain’t bad. On the Waterfront tells the story of Terry Malloy (Brando), a minor cog in the mafia machine that controls everything coming in New Jersey’s shipping docks, including the labor unions. Malloy is tricked into playing a bigger role than he would have liked in the assassination of a potential witness against the mob, and when he takes a fancy to the victim’s sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint) he starts to develop a conscience about this whole thing. Mixed in there is local priest Father Barry (Karl Malden) who has also had it up to here with all this corruption, gosh darn it.

There’s a lot to recommend about On the Waterfront. It’s got a great, mature story that seems to be the prototype for a lot of other films in the gangster genre, but it seems to stay its own creation. Apparently it was based largely on true events as chronicled in a series of Pulitzer-winning articles published in a New York newspaper.

Brando gives a fantastic performance as Terry Malloy, making him come across as a genuinely torn individual who is swept up in everything around him and unsure of what to do. I liked him a lot better here than I did in A Streetcar Named Desire. He just seemed a lot more believable here Malden is also great as Father Barry, even if he does gnaw on the scenery a few times.

So, good stuff. You should watch it.

Note: This is #30 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Unlike last week’s High Noon, the movie Shane seems to fit more of the prototypical Western (non-spaghetti) movie. You’ve got your eponymous lone hero, mysterious Shane (Alan Ladd), who is trying to atone for his previous life by sloshing masculinity all over the place and helping out Starrett family (Joe, Marian, and that brat lil’ Joey). The Starretts are trying to get the sparse community of home steaders in their region to resist being pushed off their lands by the crooked businessman Rufus Ryker and his gang of leering thugs.

I liked Shane fine enough, even though the ratios of wood chopping to gun slinging were a bit off. Every one of the main cast gives a pretty good performance, with the exception of the actor playing little Joey, whose whiny schlock made me hope he would be killed in crossfire at some point. Alas, he was not. The movie also has some great scenery and settings, and it really gave a sense of (I presume) authenticity and place. These didn’t feel like actors; they looked and talked and felt like realy people from that era. Great sound, too, especially when it came to the roaring gunfire.

I also appreciated that the film’s villain eschewed the swaggering, mustache-twirling archetype that you might have expected. Not only that, but while his methods get out of his own control towards the end he actually does have point of view and motivations that you can understand. During one showdown between Ryker and Shane we learn that he does have a semi-legitimate claim on the land where the homesteaders have …steaded their …homes. The question becomes one larger than simple ownership of land, and I get the sense that this was exactly the kind of thing that people of that era had to deal with.

So, not bad, though not particularly deep or riveting. For a Western, there was relatively little action or tension. I mainly got out of it a sense of place, time, and character. Which isn’t that bad, either.

Note: This is #29 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

At first I thought High Noon was going to be a quintessential cowboy movie, what with Gary Cooper in the tall, lanky lead as a sheriff in a small town set upon by criminals. But unlike next week’s movie Shane, High Noon actually doesn’t follow that template once you get into it. In fact, I’ve started to mentally append the subtitle “The Existential Cowboy” to this movie’s main title since it has a lot more going on underneath the surface about facing death alone.

The surface in question deals with Will Kane (Cooper), who is at the end of his tenure as the sheriff (or marshal, whatever) of a small town in New Mexico. Kane has just married his pretty and pacifistic new wife Amy (Grace Kelly) and is getting ready to start his new life elsewhere when he receives word that a man he helped put away for murder has been released and is on his way into town to take his revenge on Kane and everyone else involved with bringing him (temporarily, anyway) to justice. Most of the rest of the movie deals with Kane’s trying to recruit a team to defend the town against the approaching killers.

What I appreciated about this movie is that it’s really about how one man faces his presumably certain death once it’s clear that nobody (well, almost nobody) is going to help them. The movie’s depth and tension comes from watching how Kane is trying to deal with the impending doom and contrasting that with how his fellow townspeople try to cope. Most refuse to deal with it, a few flee, others deny that it exists, some wish they could help but can’t and tell Kane that he has to give up or go it alone. This is where my “The Existential Cowboy” subtitle comes into play –the movie can be seen as a existentialist parable about how people have to make their own independent choices, specifically those concerning how they accept their own mortality and inevitable death. Kane knows about the approaching doom on the 12:00 train and the audience is reminded of it by repeated shots of clocks and other indicators of time. But he has to deal with it alone.

This is cool stuff that elevates the film above a simple Western action flick and it’s just too bad that the film makers blinked at the end instead of seeing the idea all the way through. Still, it’s good stuff in that it sticks in your mind for some time after viewing.

Note: This is #28 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m not particularly looking forward to the musicals that this little experiment is going to throw at me, but I really enjoyed Singin’ in the Rain. It was charming in a “it was another time” kind of way and actually pretty funny. I don’t think we’d ever see anything like this come out of Hollywood nowadays. Plus I was surprised at how many of the songs I actually knew, like “Make ‘Em Laugh,” “Beautiful Girls,” “Good Morning,” and of course the eponymous number where Gene Kelly runs around splashing in puddles.

The plot centers on Don Lockwood (Kelly), a silent movie star who has to endure the unwelcome and slightly psychotic advances of his fellow star, Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), for the sake of maintaining their public image. This despite Lockwood’s growing relationship with the more talented, would-be actress Kathy. But when Lockwood’s studio starts to transition from silent films to “talkies” they hit a series of brick walls in the forms of Lina’s squeaky, irritating voice, her absurd modes of speech, and her complete inability to remember where the sound techs have placed the microphones.

Lina Lamont is played up for a lot of pretty good laughs, as is Lockwood’s side kick, Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor), who ends up stealing most of the scenes he’s in. So the movie really is amusing and genuinely endearing. And as with Swing Time my favorite parts were actually the music/dance numbers. Those people can really move. It just seems funny to me now that “big song and dance number” were part of your basic movie building blocks back then, since they seem to be almost randomly dropped in. It also occurs to me, though, that in 50 years people will look at today’s movies and say the same thing of car chases, shootouts, and gratuitous special effects shots.

Along those lines, it’s also noteworthy that this seems to be one of the earlier color movies, and man did the film makers run with that little piece of technology. Some of the musical numbers were really bright, and the “Broadway Melody Ballet” in particular looked like some giant had vomited an entire box of Crayola Crayons on the wardrobe department. And not one of those little 12 color boxes, either –I’m talking about one of those huge, 96 count boxes with neon green next to bright yellow and sky blue paired with bright purple. It was pretty sensational, but I guess that was the goal.

So, I’d definitely recommend Singin’ in the Rain. It’s really unlike anything I’ve seen in the last few decades. Trailer below.

Note: This is #27 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009. Halfway through!

Oooh, the first color movie in this little escapade! Humphry Bogart and Katherine Hepburn play what I consider to be a fairly unlikely couple in this 1951 drama/adventure film. When the prim and proper Rose Sayer (Hepburn) sees her church destroyed and her missionary brother killed by Germans invading East Africa during World War I, she flees with the rough but good natured riverboat Captain Charlie Allnut (Bogart). On their way down river the two fall in love and hatch a plan to use Charlie’s boat, The African Queen, to attack the Germans. Well, Rose devises the plan. Then she forces it on Charlie.

As an adventure story, this works fairly well. We get to see the two refugees turned guerrilla fighters navigate the perils of the river and African wildlife. Rose, who was already out of her element to begin with, is thrown headfirst into something completely opposite her nature, with a companion to match. So there’s some interesting dynamics there.

What really seemed to fall apart for me, though, was the inevitable but still inexplicable romance between the two leads. These two people are not only completely different and apparently incompatible, but they’re only with each other for a few days before the fall madly and deeply in love. It’s not believable and smacks of something that was crammed in there just because that’s the sort of thing that’s supposed to happen in the movies. I would have appreciated the movie more if the relationship between the two characters were more nuanced and the movie ended with the hint that they could grow into more over time.

Still, the performances by Bogart and Hepburn are good as to be expected, and a lot of the cinematography with the boat scenes was head and shoulders above what I’ve seen in earlier movies. The African Queen sits in the middle of the pack in terms of how much I liked it, but it’s definitely not bad.

Trailer below.

Note: This is #26 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Here, wait. I need to get this out of the way first:

Everybody take a deep breath and shout “STELA! HEEEY! STEEEEELLAAAAAAA!” Okay, good. Glad that’s done. Let’s move on.

For about the first half of this movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s stage play I was thinking that my review was basically going to amount to “Blah, blah, blah. Talking heads. Boring!” And indeed that’s a pretty accurate reflection of how I felt until about the second half when things picked up.

The movie follows the story of Blanche DuBois (Vivian Leigh), a self-styled Southern belle with a quickly tarnishing old family name. She’s kind of messed up in the head, as becomes apparent to her more level headed sister Stella Kowalski (Kim Hunter) and Stella’s brutish husband Stanley (Marlon Brando). Blanche moves herself in to Stella and Stanley’s ramshackle New Orleans apartment and starts to interfere with their lives, though whether out of malice or her inherent ditziness the audience isn’t quite sure which. Tensions grow and stuff.

Like a lot of stage plays, Streetcar’s real luster comes from its presentation of characters and how we as viewers get to gradually learn and infer things about the characters and their relationships. For example, Blanche’s back story and the reality of her current predicament are slowly peeled away, and we get as much entertainment out of that as we do empathizing with other characters as they learn the same things.

And this is a movie full of great performances. Leigh does a great job as a kooky and eventually unhinged Blanche, but it’s really Marlin Brando that steals the show. The movie is worth watching for his performance alone as the animalistic and cruel Stanley Kowalski. Brando just slops pure brutish masculinity all over every scene he’s in, and though he talks like a Murloc half the time, he’s fascinating to watch and I was eventually drawn in by both his relationship with Stella and his developing attitudes towards Blanche.

Eventually. This whole thing took a long time to set up and get going, but while that part was pretty numbing, the payoff was worth it and it’s the kind of story that sticks with you and keeps you thinking back on it for a while afterwords.

Trailer below.

Also this week, Jeremy reveiwed The Philadelphia Story.

Note: This is #25 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

I think it’s kind of telling that just a couple of weeks later I can barely remember a dang thing about Eve OR this movie that’s all about her.

There’s something about an aging stage actress who gets eclipsed and outmaneuvered by her outwardly fawning but secretly conniving assistant and inadvertent understudy. I guess what the movie did really well was set up a whole cast of characters and paint a web of relationships between them so that much of the movie’s energy came from watching and keeping track of their relationships. As things develop, for example, there are coalitions and politics and loyalties that come into play, most of which are centered around Bette Davis’s character of Margo Channing.

And that’s fine, especially if you’re into stuff like that –good writing, character development, and so on. The acting was also generally, good, though some of the performances –Davis’s in particular– do have a bit of that overdramatization flare from this period that I find so grating. You’d know what I mean if you saw it.

So, really can’t bring myself to say much more about this one. I know it won a lot of awards and it’s on this list of classics for various reasons, but it just didn’t click with me.

Trailer below.

Also this week: Jeremy Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

Note: This is #24 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Oh, man. Talk about bringing the crazy. Sunset Boulevard really surprised me by being an absurdly black comedy with a performance by Gloria Swanson that by all rights should be so completely over the top that it circles back up behind you But it’s fantastically bizare and crazy and cringe-inducing and awesome.

The movie follows Joe Gillis (played by William Holden), a struggling screenwriter looking for any straw to grasp at to keep from returning home in disgrace. While speeding down Sunset Boulevard and evading repo men intent on taking his car, Gillis happens upon the decrepid estate of faded silent film starlet Norma Desmond (Swanson) and her totally creepy butler. After spraying crazy all over the place and chewing up every bit of scenery in sight, Desmond decides that she likes this particular fly that has stumbled into her lair and conscripts him to rewrite a sprawling screenplay that she believes will be her vehicle for a Hollywood comeback. Gillis acquiesces, seeing this as the least of the bad options available to him at the moment, but before long he complicity settles into the role of Desmond’s boy toy.

Gloria Swanson’s portrayal of Norma Desmond absolutely dominates this movie, though. Desmond is intense, larger than life, and grandiose in her opinions of how great she was, is, and will be. This isn’t just your garden variety celebrity’s exaggerated opinion of self worth –Desmond is F’ING CRAZY, and Swanson plays this megalomania with a really strange, fantastical, incredibly florid style that gives the character a weird gravitational pull in every scene she’s in. Your eyes just can’t escape her. If nothing else, she’s memorable in the role, and it’s the kind of spectacle you probably won’t regret seeing.

It’s also notable that Sunset Strip is apparently one of the first movies to really take Hollywood to task over the injustices it can do stars who have outlived their usefulness. While Desmond is obviously the author of much of her own misfortune, he film isn’t very kind to the Hollywood machine of the time, which one can only assume exists today, possibly in a more monstrous form. This is in fairly strong contrast to other movies about movies (not to mention public relations efforts coming out of Hollywood) that portray actors’ lives as nothing but idyllic and glamorous.

At any rate, I really liked this movie. It’s just so crazy and weird and darkly funny that it feels pretty far ahead of its time. Trailer below.

Memorable quotes:

Joe Gillis: You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Norma Desmond: I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.

Norma Desmond: All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.

Note: This is #23 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Well, here we have the first real western (or close enough to it) in this little experiment. Surprising, since that’s the kind of genre (along with musicals) that comes to mind when I think about the word “bygone.” And yet The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is really pretty good.

It tells the story of two down-and-out Americans in Mexico who make a last-ditch effort at striking it rich by teaming up with an old but experienced prospector. Full of gusto, the trio sets off into the Sierra Madre mountains to brave bandits and the harsh climate in hopes of finding gold. Then they find it. But that’s when the real danger begins.

The biggest threat to their safety and newly found wealth, it turns out, is not from the bandits or the sun or collapsing mines, though those do all take a swing at them. In another example of the “hell is other people” philosophy, the real villains of the movie turn out to be its heroes, or at least one of them. Humphrey Bogart plays Fred Dobbs, who at the beginning of the movie seems destitute but honest and completely lacking in greed. Once he and his two new business partners find more gold than they ever dreamed of, though, Dobbs starts to turn nuttier than a squirrel fart and everyone involved has to start watching their backs. So the movie has a traditional western adventure plot (bandits! gunfights! grimacing!), but also a strong psychological component as the characters wrestle with their rapidly devolving relationships. And it all caps off with a tragic twist ending.

My only real complaint with the movie is that the acting covers a pretty wide range of quality. Bogart is good, even when he has to crank up the crazy, but the rest of the cast gives stilted and awkward readings of their lines more often than not. It sounds more like some actors trying to lean their lines rather than performances in front of a rolling camera. Still, overall a great movie and I finally got to learn where that “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!” line comes from, even if it is misquoted.

Trailer below.

Note: This is #22 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Here’s a question every generation has to answer, hopefully not too many times: What happens when veterans come home from a war? Released right around the time this was happening after World War II, The Best Years of Our Lives follows the interconnected lives of three veterans coming home to a small, midwestern town. One is a formerly successful banker with an apparently perfect family, one is a down-and-out but stand up guy whose wife turned floozy while he was gone, and the third is a young sailor who was maimed in an accident that took his hands and replaced them with hooks.

Compared to the concept of the world war, this is a trio of relatively small stories, but the story telling and film are very well done. You get a real sense of human drama as these people and their families try to cope with assimilation back into a post-war world. They not only struggle with drastic changes to their bodies (hello, hooks for hands!) but their families, marriages, workplaces, and societies in general. Yet it pulls up well short of melodrama and manages to always stay interesting to watch.

The ensemble cast of actors in this one also do a really good job, with just about everything coming off as natural and flowing. Of particular note is the guy who played the sailor with the lost hands, who even though he wasn’t a professional actor was good enough at it to win an Academy Award. And you get a happy ending! What’s not to like?

Trailer below. Oddly, the Homer character is hardly there to be seen at all.

Note: This is #21 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Yeah, here’s another one I have to admit to never having seen, despite having absorbed a lot of it through popular culture. I wasn’t a minute into the film before I was yelling “Hey, they’re ripping off Futurama!” And actually, I really liked It’s a Wonderful Life.

The plot is that George Bailey (James Stewart) grows up in the small town of Bedford Falls and has big dreams of going to college and becoming an engineer. George is a boy and eventually a man of high character and compassion for others, and these qualities act to trap him in Bedford Falls, since there always seems to be someone there in need of his help. Mostly this takes the form of protecting his deceased father’s Building & Loan Association, which is critical to helping the town’s less fortunate citizens afford housing and which is constantly under attack from the nefarious banker Mr. Potter. Bailey’s life story thus becomes one of constantly deferred and inevitably lost dreams, with his his own hapiness and potential always taking a back seat to the needs of his fellow men and women.

This is a surprisingly deep and meaningful portrait of a good man, and the viewer always has to wonder if he/she would have the same moral fiber as Bailey and if his sacrifices are ultimately worth it. I loved James Stewart in this role, much more than any of the previous things I’ve seen him in, like The Philadelphia Story or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that George Bailey is actually a multifaceted and tragic character instead of a one-sided idealized character or stereotype.

And I have to admit, I got kind of misted up in the last 20 minutes or so of this life when Bailey’s dilemma comes to a head and he wishes he’d never been born. It’s a great story about the importance of community and sacrifice, much more effective than Mr. Smith was. So if you’re the rare breed like me that’s never seen it, you should check it out. I hear it’s on TV like every Christmas.

Trailer below.

Also this week, Jeremy reviewed The Circus.

Note: This is #20 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

As far as examples of film noir go, I liked Double Indemnity a lot more than I did Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon, mainly because it’s so different and intriguing in the way that it tells a murder mystery from the villain’s point of view. The villain in question is Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), a shady insurance salesman living in L.A. When Neff tries to re-up an insurance policy on an old client, the lady of the household (blond and sultry, of course) tempts him into a plan involving the murder of her husband and not only cashing in on his fat life insurance policy, but doing so using the “double indemnity” clause that super sizes the settlement. The balance of the movie traces the unraveling of the conspirators’ plans.

There’s plenty to like about the movie. If I were doing this 52-in-52 thing from the perspective of a student of film, for example, I’d probably remark on the interesting framing technique that opens the movie with a bleeding Neff confessing his entire sequence of dirty deeds into a dictaphone machine so that the bulk of the movie is presented as a flashback. I’m guessing such a thing wasn’t nearly as common in 1944 as it is now.

But I won’t go into all that, because I think watching Double Indemnity in 2009 actually stands up fine just as entertainment outside of an academic exercise. MacMurray and Barbara Stanwick give great performances and in line with the whole film noir thing the hook is that it’s fun to see morally challenged people behaving badly while moping around starkly lit sets. And I liked how while the story was a straight-up murder mystery, the mystery in this case wasn’t who done it, but rather how Ness’s nemesis (a co-worker in charge of investigating insurance fraud) was going to figure out what we already know.

So, good stuff. Plus I got a kick out of every time Neff called somebody “Baby.” Trailer below.

This week Jeremy also reviewed The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Note: This is #19 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Well, my first real musical in this little experiment. Yankee Doodle Dandy is both a musical and a biographical picture. It tells the story of George M. Cohan (James Cagney), who was a man of many talents on the stage and who wrote a bunch of snappy songs about how totally awesome America is, including the eponymous “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “Over There.”

The movie tells the story of Cohan’s life, starting with his early days in a family stage act through his rise to a major star and through his retirement. There are musical numbers scattered all through the biography, and what’s interesting is that the film makers don’t have to contrive any kind of reason for the actors to break into a song and dance. We just see the Cohans performing the stage productions before an audience. Some of the pieces were pretty elaborate, like the whole “Yankee Doodle Dandy” piece where Cohan participates in a horse race. And James Cagney, who I always thought of as “that guy in all those gangstar movies” was surprisingly good at singing and dancing.

Other than that, it’s a pretty standard rags to riches, American dream kind of biography. George Cohan rises through the top of his profession through a combination of talent, hard work, and smarmy self-confidence. Then the world passes him by after his career has peaked.

The main problem I had with the movie was that it was long at 126 minutes, and felt even longer than that. I know it’s attempting a relatively complete examination of Cohan’s life, but it really did drag at certain points. Still, that aside it’s not bad.

Also this week, Jeremy reviewed The Searchers.

Note: This is #18 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Yes, it’s true. I’d never seen Casablanca, even though I’d picked up the gist of the story and all the famous lines through some kind of pop culture osmosis. Turns out I liked the movie, though didn’t think it was THAT great.

Humphrey Bogart stars as Rick Blaine, the American in exile owner of a swanky saloon in the Morocan city of Casablanca. World War II is brewing and after the Nazi invation of France Casablanca is home to many refugees, all of them seeking to use the city as a gateway to safety. When Blaine comes into possession of priceless documents that could be used to get anyone out of the country no questions asked, he is torn between selling them and giving them to a new couple who shows up in town: his old lover Ilsa Lund (played by Ingred Bergman) and her new husband, a Czech resistance fighter on the run from the Nazis. All along the way, Blaine is checked and dogged by Louis Renault, friend to the Nazis and Captain of the local police force. In the end, Blaine has to get past his bitterness over how Ilsa left him and choose between doing the selfish thing and the noble thing.

What struck me most about Casablanca was what a strong sense of place it gave you. The set pieces and photography around the Moroccan city were very convincing, and the whole thing had a kind of exotic quality to it, which contrasted sharply with both the upper class fugitives trapped there and Blaine’s establishment of “Rick’s Cafe American.” The whole romance angle between Rick and Ilsa was kind of bland to me, but the rest of the story was more than interesting enough to keep my attention.

I also liked Bogart in this movie, much more than I liked his performance in The Maltese Falcon. Rick Blaine is a morally ambivalent man for most of the movie, and this is kind of an interesting contrast to what I’ve seen so far. I have to say, though, that it was actually the crooked Police Chief Louis Renault (played by Claude Rains) who stole every scene he was in. He was the most entertaining thing to watch in the whole movie.

So, good movie, worth seeing just because it’s a touchstone of popular culture.

Also this week, Jeremy reviews X-Men Origins: Wolverine..

Note: This is #17 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

This was kind of an odd one. Sullivan’s Travels is a curious mixture of drama and comedy with the perplexing message of “Don’t try to make movies that honestly explore the human condition; just keep making comedies, you jackass.”

John Sullivan (played by Joel McCray) is a Hollywood director prized by his studio for being able to churn out commercially successful comedies. Sullivan, however, wants to make movies that examine big issues like poverty and class struggles despite the fact that he comes from a privileged background himself. When the studio execs talk him out of it by pointing out that his upbringing means he knows nothing of poverty or having to struggle to survive, Sullivan reluctantly agrees but gets the idea that he should compensate by living the life of a tramp until he feels he has suffered enough to understand poverty.

The studio execs can’t stop him, but plan to trail him to make sure that their hitmaker stays safe (with bumbling and amusing results that are incongruous with the entire spirit of the endeavor). Along the way Sullivan meets a girl (just “The Girl” according to the credits) who had been trying to break in to a Hollywood acting career but has failed and is heading home. The Girl (played by Veronica Lake, who was like SUPER hot I’m not kidding guys) buys Sullivan a meal even though she thinks he’s a tramp. When she learns about Sullivan’s true identity and social experiment, she decides to come along because she’s intrigued and finds Sullivan oddly compelling.

Like I said, the movie is a weird mix of drama and comedy, with slapstick car chases mixed in with almost maudlin moping and stark scenes of soup kitchens and homeless shelters. The acting and cinematography are both fine, if nothing particularly special or spectacular (it’s a pretty straight forward story). And Veronica Lake has great looks and charisma on screen. But all in all I found the whole thing kind of meh; it had a pretty good setup (even if it’s kind of cliche in 2009) but the direction they end up going with it just struck me as odd, especially considering how many great examinations of poverty and the poor followed –or preceded, like The Grapes of Wrath. Yes, comedies have great value to society, but Sullivan’s Travels seemed to go far beyond that and embrace a defeatist message: ignore poverty and social problems –look, here’s a funny cartoon dog! Hee hee!

Note: This is #16 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

The Maltese Falcon strikes me as another one of those classic movies that gets credit for stepping out and doing something for the first time, or at least being remembered most for it. It’s the prototypical example of “film noir” which I think is French for “everybody smokes, yanks their pants up to their arm pits, and talks really fast.” I wasn’t too enthralled with this one, but it was okay.

The plot of The Maltese Falcon is probably the most sophisticated and complicated one I’ve seen yet in this little experiment, but the gist is that private detective Sam Spade gets tangled up in several people’s competing attempts at finding the eponymous falcon, which is actually a small statue of great value. Spade (played by Humphrey Bogart) has to figure out what everyone’s angle is, who to trust, who to trick, and which one of them killed his partner. Things take a LOT of twists and turns, and the whole thing reads very much like the detective story it is.

While leaning towards the melodramatic at times (especially the scenes with the leading lady in them) the acting is pretty good, and Bogart has a certain smarmy charm as Sam Spade. You get the impression that this is a really smart AND tough guy, possessed of several shades of gray in the morality department and more than willing to play people off each other for his own gain. That makes for a refreshing change from all the romatic comedies I’ve been seeing lately. It was also hilarious to see him knock someone unconscious for hours at a time just by gently waving his knuckles in their general direction. The fight scenes, in other words, were pretty underwhelming.

If I have any real complaint about the movie it’s that the plot was difficult to follow, though admittedly that was probably by design. Maybe it’s more rewarding with repeat viewings. At any rate, it’s still worth watching as an early (and still prototypical to this day) example of the gritty detective story in film form. As I watched it I realized that like Citizen Kane, I was more familiar with The Maltese Falcon than I realized just by having seen so much of it in various parodies, tributes, and knock-offs.

Also this week, Paul reviews Grand Illusion (1937).

Note: This is #15 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

More romantic comedy, more Katharine Hepburn, more James Stewart, and more Cary Grant. The Philadelphia Story has one of the more complicated plots of its ilk that I’ve seen, telling the story of self-important socialite Tracy Lord (Hepburn), who was divorced from her jerkface husband C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant) some time ago and is getting ready to marry a self-made man (John Howard). Lord guards her privacy closely, so a local gossip rag ropes writer/newspaperman Macaulay Connor (Stewart) and another photographer into infiltrating Lord’s wedding day with her ex-husband’s help. Along the way people fall in love, out of love, and so forth. Yeah.

So the plot is a little silly and not particularly sparkling, but there are a few funny moments and some really great performances. I think, in fact, I’m beginning to understand the appeal of Katharine Hepburn. I’ve never found her sexy or attractive AT ALL, so not having seen her in movies I was a bit at a loss for understanding the reason for her appeal. Turns out, it’s the obvious one: she’s fun to watch on screen. She’s got a certain type of charisma and presence up there, and it’s easy to get carried away with whatever act she’s putting on.

Cary Grant also puts on a good show as reformed jerk C.K. Dexter Haven, and his character probably has the most depth out of any of the cast –though that’s not necessarily saying much. I was kind of disappointed with James Stuart’s performance, though. Maybe it’s because I just saw him in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but he seems to have this unique cadence to his deliveries and a limited set of mannerisms that make me think he’s always going to make me think “That’s James Stweart. He’s pretending to be someone else, but he’s not fooling me.” It’s kind of like Morgan Freeman. When I see him in the credits of any movie my brain always sees “and Morgan Freeman as …Morgan Freeman …playing some guy.”

So, not a bad movie, but I’d definitely place it in the middle of the pack of what I’ve seen so far.

Also this week, Jeremy reviewed Milk

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Note: This is #14 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Having grown up in Oklahoma, I’m familiar with the story of The Grapes of Wrath. It’s the law. I’d also read the book by John Steinbeck upon which this movie is based, and was surprised to find out the ways that the movie both differs and stays true to the source material.

Like the book, the movie tells the story of the Joads, a family that sets off to California in search of honest work and a better life after being kicked off their farm in Oklahoma. They make an arduous and occasionally deadly trip across the country in a beat up and overburdened truck, led by wayward son and ex-convict Tom Joad (played by Henry Fonda) and accompanied by a former pastor named Jim Casey. The Joads are beaten down and full of despair over losing their home and livelihood to the big banks that technically own their land, but they are optimistic about what awaits them.

When they get there, however, they just find more business owners who are willing –even eager– to take advantage of them, paying them a pitiful wage for picking fruit that’s not even sufficient to live on, much less prosper. There’s some labor union rabble rousing, some tragedy, and lots more hardships. Interestingly, the tone of the movie takes a sharp detour from the book about 3/4 of the way through, when the Joads encounter a government-sponsored labor community (shades of Socialism here, interestingly) where they have everything from fair wages to toilets to people looking out for each other. Suffice to say that the movie ends in a MUCH more upbeat tone than the book, which basically just shrugged its figurative shoulders and made you feel that the Jodes and everyone like them was hopelessly screwed. Which was probably closer to the truth historically and I thought made for a much more powerful story.

The movie had a lot of other great stuff going for it, though. Henry Fonda was fantastic as Tom Joad, for example. He gave the kind of smooth, believable performance (for which he won an Oscar) that makes you forget that you’re watching an actor and really gets you to buy into the character. John Carradine was also great as ex-pastor turned union organizer Jim Casy, I should also mention. And the cinematography, was fantastic. It strikes me that this is the kind of bleak movie that’s actually better shot in black and white given the way that they made use of such stark lighting and contrasts. To give it color would somehow be untrue to the spirit.

So, I liked the book better for various reasons, but this was a great movie.