movies

Good grief, has it really been a month since I wrote anything for the movie list? I'm going to get caught up quickly:

June 17: Jackie Brown. Quentin Tarantino's love letter to Pam Grier, and a worthy subject she is for tribute. Unfortunately I missed the long shot at the very beginning with Grier walking through the airport. But I saw my second favorite scene, when Robert Forster sees her for the first time at the jail. He's a great actor. I wish this movie had revived his career the way Pulp Fiction did John Travolta's.

June 18: Bowfinger. This movie was funny, but I felt uncomfortable about finding it funny because the premise was so odious: Steve Martin as a crap director who makes a movie around superstar Eddie Murphy without Murphy's knowledge. Basically Martin's film crew stalks Murphy until he goes insane. There's also a starlet with intimate knowledge of the casting couch, in case you weren't already offended. That said, I was laughing even while I was cringing.

June 19: The Impossible Years. Talk about offensive! This movie opens with a date rape scene played for comedy, and goes downhill from there. It's about David Niven failing to get along with his incorrigible teenage daughter. The only good thing about the movie is the daughter's (played by the future Mrs. John Delorean) hair. She had gorgeous hair.

June 29: Master and Commander. I watched this with my dad, and a fine ripping yarn it was, too. My dad had read almost all the books in the series so he was able to fill in a few gaps in the movie.

July 3: Jaws. Can you believe I had never seen this? I'm probably the last person who hadn't, so there's not much I can add. I'll just say that the shark looks incredibly silly and fake, but Speilberg did a great job of hiding the shark and building the tension so that by the time I finally did see it, I didn't care. Also, I knew nothing about the ending, but by observing the law of movie conservation I knew exactly how the shark would be killed from the moment the implement of destruction was introduced. I don't usually figure that kind of thing out, but this one was really obvious.

July 3: The Adventures of Robin Hood. This has the be the perfect swashbuckler.

July 8: Sylvia Scarlett. Katherine Hepburn plays a girl who dresses like a boy when she and her father go on the lam with Cary Grant. Hepburn's acting was shrill and annoying (I think this was from her "box office poison" years) and the conclusion of this movie was unfathomable -- Hepburn doesn't love Grant! How could anyone spend that much time in close quarters with Cary Grant and then fall for someone else? -- but it was worth watching to see Hepburn in drag. There's a very sexy scene where a woman flirts with Hepburn, draws a pencil moustache on her and kisses her on the mouth. I'm kind of surprised they got away with it actually.

July 9: Magnificent Obsession. Douglas Sirk, how do I love thee? This wasn't as good as Imitation of Life but it was still a classic melodrama. Rock Hudson plays a selfish playboy who causes Jane Wyman to be widowed and blinded, then becomes a surgeon so he can cure her. Cue the violins!

July 10: Bullitt. They showed this movie because of the car chase. Apparently before this movie, car chases were always done slow, and then sped up on film. But they did this one at full speed, and it was so effective that from then on all car chases were done this way.

July 10: The Opposite Sex. Filming a remake of The Women was a bad idea. Making it a musical, adding men to the cast, and choosing June Allyson to replace Norma Shearer and Joan Collins to replace Joan Crawford: all bad, bad ideas. The ending was also slightly changed in a way that dissatisfied me. Collins' humiliation and downfall is complete, which I guess is supposed to appeal to our sense of justice. But I loved the ending of the original, the way Crawford shrugs off her defeat and walks out with her head high and a smile on her face. I believed that Crawford's character would land on her feet, and I liked it better that way. The only good thing about the remake is Sandy Descher as the little girl. She was way better than Virginia Weidler was in the original.

July 14: Every Girl Should be Married. A demented little movie about a young woman (Betsy Drake) stalking Cary Grant. Unable to get a restraining order because I guess they didn't exist yet, he eventually marries her. Franchot Tone bizarrely competes for the affections of the crazy woman. If you're interested in the fucked up social attitudes of fifty years ago, this movie is a must see.

July 15: Demolition Man. Pee-yew, what a stinker. I'm afraid I don't have anything good to say about this movie. And yet, I watched it again knowing how bad it was. What's that about?

July 16: Zatoichi Challenged. This isn't the best Zatoichi movie I've seen -- way too much of the allegedly cute kid -- but any Zatoichi is worth watching. The plot has something to do with forbidden erotic art painted on pottery.

July 16: Quality Street. This looked like a Pride and Prejudice knockoff but it was actually more of a Persuasion knockoff. Katherine Hepburn plays an old maid who is crushed when the man she loves (Franchot Tone) returns from the Napoleonic war and doesn't find her attractive anymore. So she poses as her own neice -- who is beautiful, silly, and an incorrigible flirt -- to get back at him. The premise is ridiculous: if the years made Hepburn lose her looks, then how can a new dress and hairstyle make her beautiful again? But I love Hepburn and Tone, also Eric Blore who has a decent supporting role.

July 19: Ocean's Twelve. I didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did. It helped to view it as a parody of a caper movie, rather like Our Man Flint. The funny part was that I spent the whole movie thinking, "That woman looks like Catherine Zeta Jones, except not as pretty." And it was Catherine Zeta Jones! I'm so used to her looking super glamorous, even excessively so, that when her makeup was more appropriate for the part I didn't recognize her.

July 21: The Conspirators. Paul Henreid stars in a wartime movie about a Dutch freedom fighter trapped in neutral Lisbon, which costars Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. So basically it's Casablanca Light. They've got Hedy Lamarr to replace Ingrid Bergman, but without Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains it's a much weaker film. Still, I love Henreid and Lamarr. The best part of this movie is when Lamarr takes Henreid to a nightclub with a fado singer. Lamarr explains that fado is "songs about love that can never be," and translates the song: "In my love for you, I lost God." Yep, that sounds like fado!

July 23: Blue. No, not the Kieslowski movie. This is an atrocious film I found out about from the Onion AV Club. It's got Ricardo Montalban as the leader of a gang of banditos, Terence Stamp as his adopted son, and Karl Malden as the doctor who takes Stamp in after he's wounded during a raid. Despite all this, the movie is really awful and dull. Stamp's accent is horrendous, which they try to cover by having him rarely speak. As the AV Club reports, the best line is Montalban's: "All you can do is farm dirt, because that is what you are! Dirt!" Good golly I love Ricardo Montalban. He approaches every role with such gusto. In interviews he finds something to be proud of in every part. He even had good things to say about that circus guy he played in the Planet of the Apes movies. He sounds like the happiest person alive.

July 23: Jezebel. I've already written about this so I'll just add that it's still terrific, and this time I had more appreciation for George Brent. I should watch more of his movies.

And now I'm finally caught up, and TCM is using Elvis Costello music in a promo for their "cars in the movies" series. woo!