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March 26 movie: Orpheus. This is another one of those "I can't believe I hadn't seen this yet" movies. I watched it with my dad last weekend in DE. It was arty, poetic, perhaps pretentious, but beautifully made, and I enjoyed it a lot. My dad explained that the messages Orpheus hears over the car radio were much like coded instructions the British government sent to French resistance fighters during the war. Which, in a way, I'm sorry I know. It made the messages seem less surreal and poetic.

March 24 movie: Dance, Fools, Dance. Joan Crawford plays a socialite whose father loses everything in the stock market crash and then (in)conveniently dies. Crawford cheerfully takes a job as a reporter and plays happy homemaker for her indolent brother, who ends up selling bathtub gin for a gangster (Clark Gable) who forces him to commit murder. I thought from the title this was going to be a fun, sleazy romp like Our Dancing Daughters but it was actually sordid and depressing. No one even says the title during the film!

March 23 movie: The Women. I was concerned that the realization that Norma Shearer isn't a very good actress would diminish this movie for me. But no worries, I still loved it just as much. Shearer basically plays the same character in every movie, but since this is the first Shearer movie I ever saw, they all seem like Mary Haynes, her character here.

March 22 movie: Before Sunset. What an amazing movie. I think Lisa is right that it's even better than the first one. Maybe because this one happens more or less in real time, which better suits the unstructured nature of the movie. I love the easy rapport of the principals, and the dialogue is pitch perfect. I hate when the people in movies sound like fictional characters: too clever, too dramatic, always talking in quips and grand moments. But these characters sound like real people talking. Getting to know each other again, maybe not liking every single thing but falling head over heels anyway.

March 21 movie: Duck Soup. I think this is the Marx Brothers' greatest work. Others have equally funny moments, for instance the battle in the classroom in Horsefeathers is possibly my favorite individual scene. But Duck Soup is the most consistently brilliant, for my money. The plot and musical interludes don't slow the movie down as much as sometimes happens, and the pace of the jokes is nearly perfect.

March 20 movie: Royal Wedding. I love this movie! It's a later Fred Astaire movie, in some slight way inspired by real life: Fred plays half of a brother-sister dancing team (with Jane Powell) in London for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Fred and Adele Astaire did get their start in London, and I think they might have been there for the wedding of Elizabeth's father, George VI (then the Duke of York).

The plot is totally forgettable, but this movie includes some of my all-time favorite Astaire dance numbers, including the one with exercise equipment/coat rack, and the dancing on the ceiling number. I'm also very fond of the songs "You Know You've Been a Liar" and "I Left My Hat in Haiti," although in both cases Powell's weakness as a dance partner holds Astaire back. But the songs are both fantastic.

March 20 movie: The Man in the Cloak. Joseph Cotten plays Edgar Allen Poe, which is supposed to be a big surprise ending except it's really, really obvious. First of all because he reads some of his own poetry early on, and secondly because most of the movie takes place in a home with a pet raven. Not Poe's home, but still. Poe is an international man of mystery in this film, solving a murder and protecting young French waif Leslie Caron. Barbara Stanwyck plays the villain. She's pretty good at that.

March 17 movie: Front Page Woman. Enough with the comedies about men who hold their women in contempt! Was TCM doing a series on "Women Who Love The Men Who Hate Them" or something? Bette Davis and George Brent play reporters at rival newspapers. They're in love but she won't marry him until he admits that she's as good a reporter as he is. Instead he destroys her career with some truly vicious stunts (like planting false evidence for her to find and put on the front page of her paper). This is like His Girl Friday if Cary Grant hated Rosalind Russell and rejoiced in her downfall. They gave Davis the last laugh, but it was too little, too late. Ugh.

Every few years I watch this movie, find it totally repugnant, then forget I've seen it and watch it again, remembering how much I hate it only after I'm well into a repeat viewing. Well no more. I'm taking my stand right here. Writing this movie up will help me remember next time that I've seen it before and it's vile.

March 16 movie: My Life with Caroline. Another movie about a flighty rich woman who fancies herself in love with another man, and the husband who maneuvers her into realizing she really loves him. I knew this was a bad movie going in and only watched it because it starred Anna Lee, who played Lila Quartermaine for decades on General Hospital. (Trivia note: Lila's son on the show is named Alan but he's nothing like the H. Rider Haggard character Allan Quatermain.) Anna Lee was a luminous young woman, but in retrospect, I don't love her enough to watch any crap just because she's in it. That honor is reserved for a select few like Cary Grant, Claudette Colbert and Ricardo Montalban. Next time I'll stick to Lee's good movies, like Flying Tigers or How Green Was My Valley.

March 16 movie: Tovarich. Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer play exiled Russian royalty living in poverty in Paris. Sounds depressing but it's actually a screwball comedy. Go figure! According to the movie "tovarich" means "comrade," and therefore the title refers to the villain, a Soviet party leader played by Basil Rathbone. This doesn't rocket to the top of my list of favorite Colbert movies, but only because she made so many brilliant ones and this is merely very good. I'd definitely watch it again.

March 14 movie: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It's been a long slog, but I've finally watched all three LOTR directors' commentaries. I had a lot to say about this when I watched it, but a week later it's all faded into a vague memory. (Lucky for y'all.) I do remember that they seemed a bit defensive about the criticism of the movie, and maybe acknowledged some validity in said criticism. You don't spend several minutes explaining why a movie can never live up to a book, if you think you nailed it.

In my opinion, it seemed that most if not all the problems with The Two Towers followed from the decision to move the entire Minus Morgul/Shelob sequence to the third movie. I think that was a good decision; without it, there is almost nothing for Frodo and Sam to do in The Return of the King. But once that decision is made, they're pretty much forced to embellish and invent story for The Two Towers. You may feel that they went too far; I certainly did. But they basically had to. In essence they sacrificed the second movie for the third.

I wanted to reread The Two Towers and see if I could figure out anything they could have used to hang the story on besides Helm's Deep. But dang if we couldn't find the book. The perils of a cluttered life.

March 14 movie: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I popped open the DVD to watch the commentary on this, and what do you know, no commetary! Too bad, I really wanted to hear Alfonso Cuaron's take on the Harry Potter franchise. It was still fun to watch the movie again. I think this is the best of the movies so far. The best of the books too, so that worked out well. I wonder when the fourth movie will come out? I'm actually more looking forward to the fifth.

March 13 movie: That Uncertain Feeling. This is what happens when I get so far behind in writing up movies: I have no idea what this movie was about. Not a clue. I have to look it up on IMDB. Okay, now I remember. The movie was awful. That's probably why I forgot everything about it. Merle Oberon plays a silly rich woman who convinces herself she's in love with misunderstood genius pianist (and accomplished freeloader) Burgess Meredith. No, he was nothing like the Penguin at that age. Melvyn Douglas plays Oberon's husband, whose affection for her is exceeded only by his contempt. And now I've spent far too long thinking about this movie. Time to forget it again.

March 12 movie: Two Weeks with Love. This was a very slight Ricardo Montalban movie. Actually no, it was a very slight Jane Powell movie which had Ricardo Montalban in it. She's a teenager on vacation with her family in the Catskills. He's a Cuban on whom every woman in the place has a terrible crush. The major plot point is whether Powell's parents will let her wear a corset, thus enabling Montalban to see her as a woman rather than a girl. I can't recommend this movie unless you're a major fan of Montalban. Well, Debbie Reynolds (as Powell's younger sister) has a few decent songs.

March 12 movie: My Best Fiend. My goodness, that Klaus Kinski was a crazy son of a bitch. I hear that Werner Herzog wasn't exactly a paragon of calm rationality himself, but he was the one making the movie so he comes off a little better. The movie was Herzog's elegy to Kinski, and I think he found and interviewed every person in the world who had something nice to say about Kinski's character. Hint: there weren't many. The most telling moment for me was Herzog saying how much he missed laughing with Kinski, with their arms around each other, and then admitting that he wondered if he only thought about it because it was recorded on film. I got the impression from the old footage (largely from Les Blank's documentary about Fitzcarraldo) that there wasn't much laughter between them, on the whole.

March 10 movie: Designing Woman. Vincent Minnelli comedy about a sports writer (Gregory Peck) and a fashion designer (Lauren Bacall) who meet on vacation, fall in love and get married without knowing anything about each other. One thing I really like about this movie is that neither Peck nor Bacall ever denigrate each other's careers. Not only does Peck not expect Bacall to quit her job, he doesn't complain about them living in her (larger and nicer) apartment. But the best thing about this movie, the absolute best thing, is that the front door of Bacall's apartment has the doorknob right in the center! I remember seeing this movie years and years ago and thinking that was just wild and sophisticated. The doorknob is in the center of the door!

I could have lived without the comic relief characters: the "punchy" (i.e. brain damaged) former boxer, and the effeminate -- but not gay! he has a wife and three children! -- Broadway choreographer. Though it was a nice touch when said effeminate -- but not gay! -- choreographer beat the crap out of a bunch of mobsters with his crazy dance fu.

March 9 movie: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. It took several days but I finally watched it with the director's commentary. Everyone who wants to see this probablty already has, so I'll just mention that I found the explanation of Frodo vs. Sam vs. lembas bread somewhat unsatisfactory. And that the funniest moments were: Peter Jackson admitting if he was too busy to walk all the way to the craft table, he would sometimes eat the lembas bread while no one was looking; and Fran Walsh commenting that she and Philippa Boyens sympathized with Shelob because she's an older woman who has hairy legs, has gained weight and can't get through spaces she used to fit into, and has an insatiable appetite.

March 7 movie: Death Takes a Holiday. As you might guess from the title, this movie features Death (Fredric March) going on vacation in mortal form for a few days. It's a lot less funny than I expected. In fact it's not really funny at all, except for a dry running gag about how no one in the world can die while Death is off the job.

The thing that surprised me was Death's personality. Very imperious, and also a real hothead. Tends to take offense at the tiniest presumed slight, and threatens to come back in his unearthly form and kill everyone at the drop of a hat. Somehow I imagined Death being more calm and detached. Death Takes a Holiday was of course the inspiration for Meet Joe Black. Which I haven't seen, because I'm not crazy about Brad Pitt and I heard it wasn't very good.

March 6 movie: The Catch a Thief. Of all the movies Hitchcock made with Cary Grant, this was probably the least spectacular. Which is what my ex used to call "praising with faint damn." It's a good movie, just not as good as Notorious, Suspicion or North by Northwest. I think this is at least partly because Grant doesn't have as much chemistry with Grace Kelly as he did with his costars in those other movies.

March 4 movie: Shaun of the Dead. As I've mentioned before, horror isn't my thing. But I loved this. I think it worked for me because the scary parts of the movie weren't played for laughs: it was sincerely scary when it was trying to be scary. And extremely funny when it was trying to be funny. The first part of the movie, where Shaun stumbles through his day oblivious to the impending zombie attack, were the perfect combination of creepy suspense and comedy.

My only quibble (and it's a very minor one) is that aren't zombies supposed to be able to smell the living? In this version they easily fool the zombies by shuffling and groaning, and it seems like the zombies find them by sound. I'm not really up on zombie movie lore, though I gather there are lots of references to other zombie movies in Shaun of the Dead. I caught a reference to 28 Days Later in the extras, when Shaun explains that despite what you might have heard recently, zombies move very slowly. Georg pointed out another in the movie itself, a newscast dismissing theories that the zombie outbreak was caused by "rage infected monkeys."

There are some good extras on the DVD, notably a "flip book" where the two writers run quickly through an outline of the entire movie. They did the flip book before they started filming the movie, so lots of little stuff has changed. It's hilarious when they refer to some line that they're obviously quite proud of, but which didn't make it into the final movie. I noticed in the flip book [minor spoiler] that the original plan was for the jerky friend to still be a jerk when he dies. In the outline he's supposed to say "Am I the only one around here with any brains?" right before the zombies eat him. Which is a really cheesy gag and I'm glad they dropped it. Then they planned the scene so he apologizes to Shaun, his girlfriend says "That took guts" and then the zombies eat him. Another groaner. It worked much better in the final version where he's about to apologize to Shaun, but the zombies eat him before he gets his redemption.

March 2 movie: The Bad and the Beautiful. Wow, this was amazing. The story of a hated Hollywood producer's rise to the top, apparently it's a thinly veiled account of David O. Selznick that hit so close to reality, Selznick threatened to sue (according to Jamie Weinman). Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas, the Selznick character) is a cold manipulator with no compunction about crushing people to get what he wants: he tosses over his early partner when a more famous director becomes available; seduces a downtrodden actress to get a better performance from her, then ditches her as soon as the movie is over; and arranges an affair for the wife of a writer to give the writer time to work, which affair leads to the wife's death.

This was a juicy Hollywood insider story and also a great melodrama. Besides Selznick it also includes fictional depictions of Erich von Stroheim, Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma, and William Faulkner. Plus I'm sure other people who I didn't recognize because I don't know enough about the movie industry. For instance I read that the actress Shields seduces represented Diana Barrymore, daughter of John Barrymore.

February 28 movie: Persuasion. I was flipping channels and came across this on IFC. Problem was, it had started over a half-hour before. I was feeling sad about having missed so many great scenes when I remembered that I have the movie on DVD. Duh! Popped it in and got to watch from the start.

Overall I think this is my favorite Austen adaptation. It's not as exhaustively faithful as the Pride and Prejudice miniseries, but they do a really good job of capturing the spirit of the characters. Also they neatly handled the fact that the book wasn't quite finished and had two endings, by incorporating them both. This may be my favorite Austen book too, if for no other reason than for the marvelously romantic "You pierce my soul" letter. Austen generally seemed a bit uncomfortable with the declaration of love (it's either treated as comic, i.e. Mr. Elton or Mr. Collins, or mostly happens off-camera so to speak) but she nailed it here.

I said before that this movie is much subtler and quieter than some other Austen, and that's basically true. But it does have its share of broad comedy, notably Anne's hypochondriac sister Mary. I've since read that Austen's own mother was a hypochondriac who selfishly insisted on being the center of attention while Austen herself was suffering from an illness that eventually killed her. It's pretty amazing that Austen was able to write comedy on the theme while it was happening so tragically in her own life. The actress who plays Mary also shows up as Miss Bates in the Hollywood version of Emma, and I think she's in another Austen movie but I can't remember off the top of my head.

Feb 26 movie: Zatoichi and the Doomed Man. This one begins with Zatoichi being beaten as a punishment for gambling. Which was kind of a weird beginning for the movie. While in jail the night before, he meets a condemned man who claims to be innocent and begs Zatoichi to go to his town and tell the people who can exonerate him. On the way Zatoichi meets a sleazy monk who later impersonates him in order to get free booze and women from small-time gangsters hoping to hire the famed Zatoichi. As you can imagine, this really pisses off the real Zatoichi.

Georg and I enjoyed this very much, but we agreed that the ending kind of fell apart. It seemed like they didn't really know how to wrap up the story, so they kept going until they ran out of steam, and then just stopped. Still, it was worth it for the hilarious Zatoichi imitation by the monk.

Feb 25 movie: Ivanhoe. Shayne, Lisa and I got together to watch this. What fun! It was a grand epic with lots of sword fighting, conflict between Saxons and Normans, the rescue of Richard the Lionhearted, a jousting tournament, and a great cast (notably Joan Fontaine, George Sanders and Elizabeth Taylor). They were clearly going for the feel of The Adventures of Robin Hood, in fact the two movies tell overlapping stories and Robin of Locksley is a minor character here. Ivanhoe didn't quite reach the heights of the earlier film (perhaps because star Robert Taylor was too serious, he didn't have the sense of humor that made Errol Flynn such a brilliant swashbuckler hero) but it was a good movie in its own right. Now if Ivanhoe had had Alan Hale, then maybe it could have given The Adventures of Robin Hood a run for its money!

Feb 22 movie: The Best Years of Our Lives. This is a long movie and I've seen it recently, so I didn't intend to watch it again. But I couldn't help myself; it's that good.

I've only seen Dana Andrews in a couple of movies but I always really enjoy him. I'm going to have to look for more of his work. As I said last time, Harold Russell is amazing, but he did very little acting besides this. I read that this movie was the first ever to depict intimacy with a disabled person. It's a very touching scene where Russell takes off his artificial hands and shows his girlfriend (Teresa Wright) how helpless he is without them, thinking she'll dump him. But instead she helps him get into bed and kisses him goodnight. The first time I saw this movie, I didn't know Russell really had lost his hands, and I wondered if it was some kind of special effect (like Gary Sinese' legs in Forrest Gump). But when they showed his bare arms it was obviously real.