Category Archives: Film Review

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: How The West Was Won (dir by Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, John Ford, and Richard Thorpe)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(With the Oscars scheduled to be awarded on March 4th, I have decided to review at least one Oscar-nominated film a day.  These films could be nominees or they could be winners.  They could be from this year’s Oscars or they could be a previous year’s nominee!  We’ll see how things play out.  Today, I take a look at the 1963 best picture nominee, How The West Was Won!)

How was the west won?

According to this film, the west was won by the brave men and women who set out in search of a better life.  Some of them were mountain men.  Some of them worked for the railroads.  Some of them rode in wagons.  Some of them gambled.  Some of them sang songs.  Some shot guns.  Some died in the Civil War.  The thing they all had in common was that they won the west and everyone had a familiar face.  How The West Was Won is the history of the west, told through the eyes of a collection of character actors and aging stars from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

In many ways, How The West Was Won was the Avatar of the early 60s.  It was a big, long, epic film that was designed to make viewers feel as if they were in the middle of the action.  Avatar used 3D while How The West Was Won used Cinerama.  Each scene was shot with three synchronized cameras and, when the film was projected onto a curved Cinerama screen, it was meant to create a truly immersive experience.  The film is full of tracking shots and, while watching it on TCM last night, I tried to imagine what it must have been like to see it in 1963 and to feel as if I was plunging straight into the world of the old west.  The film’s visuals were undoubtedly diminished by being viewed on a flat screen and yet, there were still a few breath-taking shots of the western landscape.

The other thing that How The West Was Won had in common with Avatar was a predictable storyline and some truly unfortunate dialogue.  I can understand why How The West Was Won was awarded two technical Oscars (for editing and sound) but, somehow, it also picked up the award for Best Writing, Screenplay or Story.  How The West Was Won is made up of five different parts, each one of which feels like a condensed version of a typical western B-movie.  There’s the mountain man helping the settlers get down the river story.  There’s the Civil War story.  There’s the railroad story and the outlaw story and, of course, the gold rush story.  None of it’s particularly original and the film is so poorly paced that some sections of the film feel rushed while others seem to go on forever.

Some of the film’s uneven consistency was undoubtedly due to the fact that it was directed by four different directors.  Henry Hathaway handled three sections while John Ford took care of the Civil War, George Marshall deal with the coming of the railroad, and an uncredited Richard Thorpe apparently shot a bunch of minor connecting scenes.

And yet, it’s hard not to like How The West Was Won.  Like a lot of the epic Hollywood films of the late 50s and early 60s, it has its own goofy charm.  The film is just so eager to please and remind the audience that they’re watching a story that could only be told on the big screen.  Every minute of the film feels like a raised middle finger to the threat of television.  “You’re not going to see this on your little idiot box!” the film seems to shout at every moment.  “Think you’re going to get Cinerama on NBC!?  THINK AGAIN!”

Then there’s the huge cast.  As opposed to Avatar, the cast of How The West Was Won is actually fun to watch.   Admittedly, a lot of them are either miscast or appear to simply be taking advantage of a quick payday but still, it’s interesting to see just how many iconic actors wander through this film.

For instance, the film starts and, within minutes, you’re like, “Hey!  That’s Jimmy Stewart playing a mountain man who is only supposed to be in his 20s!”

There’s Debbie Reynolds as a showgirl who inherits a gold claim!

Is that Gregory Peck as a cynical gambler?  And there’s Henry Fonda as a world-weary buffalo hunter!  And Richard Widmark as a tyrannical railroad employee and Lee J. Cobb as a town marshal and Eli Wallach as an outlaw!

See that stern-faced settler over there?  It’s Karl Malden!

What’s that?  The Civil War’s broken out?  Don’t worry, General John Wayne is here to save the day.  And there’s George Peppard fighting for the Union and Russ Tamblyn fighting for the Confederacy!  And there’s Agnes Moorehead and Thelma Ritter and Robert Preston and … wait a minute?  Is that Spencer Tracy providing narration?

When Eli Wallach’s gang shows up, keep an eye out for a 36 year-old Harry Dean Stanton.  And, earlier, when Walter Brennan’s family of river pirates menaces Karl Malden, be sure to look for an evil-looking pirate who, for about twenty seconds, stares straight at the camera.  When you see him, be sure to say, “Hey, it’s Lee Van Cleef!”

How The West Was Won is a big, long, thoroughly silly movie but, if you’re a fan of classic film stars, it’s worth watching.  It was a huge box office success and picked up 8 Oscar nominations.  It lost best picture to Tom Jones.

(By the way, in my ideal fantasy world, From Russia With Love secured a 1963 U.S. release, as opposed to having to wait until 1964, and became the first spy thriller to win the Oscar for Best Picture.)

Hiding in Plain Sight: THE FRONT (Columbia 1976)

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

When a film gets labeled as a “comedy-drama”, chances are good you’re in for an uneven film. Such is the case with THE FRONT, Martin Ritt’s 1976 movie about the 1950’s blacklist. There are plenty of things to like about the movie, especially in the performances, but the somewhat heavy-handed script by Walter Bernstein results in an undeniably mixed bag.

Woody Allen  stars as Howard Prince, a lowly cashier perpetually up to his glasses in gambling debts, whose childhood friend Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy) is a blacklisted TV writer. Miller asks Howard to “front” for him, putting his name on Miller’s scripts so the networks will buy them, in return for a 10% commission. Soon the network clamors for more of Howard’s “work”, and he begins fronting for two other blacklisted writers. Although Woody didn’t write or direct THE FRONT, he’s still basically playing his nebbishy ‘Woody’ persona, but with…

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Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: The Emigrants (dir by Jan Troell)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(With the Oscars scheduled to be awarded on March 4th, I have decided to review at least one Oscar-nominated film a day.  These films could be nominees or they could be winners.  They could be from this year’s Oscars or they could be a previous year’s nominee!  We’ll see how things play out.  Today, I take a look at the 1972 best picture nominee, The Emigrants!)

Since I’m currently dealing with either a really bad cold or the onset of the flu (let’s hope that it’s the former), I decided that Monday would be the perfect night to stay up extremely late and watch a 190-minute Swedish movie.

The Emigrants was released in Sweden in 1971 and it received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.  Then, it was released in the United States in 1972 and it managed to receive four more Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture.  The Emigrants was the third foreign language film to be nominated for Best Picture, the first film to be nominated in multiple years, and also the first Swedish film to contend for the Academy’s top prize.  (The following year, Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers would also become the second Swedish film nominated for Best Picture.)  At the same time that The Emigrants was nominated for Best Picture, its sequel, The New Land, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.  1972 was an interesting year.

The Emigrants opens in 1844, in Sweden.  Karl Oskar (Max Von Sydow) has married Kristina (Liv Ullmann).  Like his father before him, Karl Oskar is a farmer.  It’s an exhausting life.  There is never enough food to eat.  The weather is perpetually gloomy.  The harvest is always disappointing.  As poor farmers, Karl Oskar and his family face constant prejudice.  In Sweden, the only thing more corrupt than the government is the church.  After one of his daughters starves to death, what choice does Karl Oskar and his family have other than to escape to America?

As Karl Oskar’s brother, Robert (Eddie Axberg), explains, the best rice comes from the Carolinas.  The best farmland is in America.  In America, anyone can become rich.  Anyone can walk up to the President and talk to him without running the risk of being imprisoned or executed.  (In 1844, ordinary citizens could stop by the White House and make an appointment to see the President.  This, of course, would change decades later, after a disgruntled office seeker shot President Garfield.)  In America, Robert says excitedly, no one works more than 14 hours a day!  Even slaves can own land and make their own money!

The Emigrants deals with their Karl Oskar and his family’s voyage to America.  Karl Oskar and Kristina do not travel alone.  Kristina’s uncle (Allan Edwall) is with them and hopes that, in America, he will be allowed to freely practice his religious beliefs.  A former prostitute, Ulrika (Monica Zetterlund), is also with them, hoping a new land will mean a better life for both herself and her daughter.  Even Robert’s best friend, Arvid (Pierre Lindstedt), going with them.  It’s not an easy journey.  Not everyone survives the voyage to North America but those that do soon find themselves in a young and untouched country where anything seems to be possible.

Swedish cinema has a reputation for being dark and brooding but those are two words that definitely do not apply to The Emigrants, which is about as positive a portrait of America as you could ever hope to see.  Regardless of whatever tragedy may occur during the journey, this movie leaves no doubt that the journey was more than worth it.  It unfolds at a pace that is perhaps a bit too leisurely but, at the same time, it’s also an achingly pretty movie with shots that bring to mind the best of Terrence Malick.  In fact, there are times when the film is almost too pretty.  It’s possible to get so caught up in looking at all the beauty around Karl Oskar and Kristina that you lose track of the story.  Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann are both achingly pretty as well and, even more importantly, they’re believable as a married couple who are often equally in love and equally annoyed with each other.

It was interesting to go from watching The Grapes of Wrath to watching The Emigrants.  If The Grapes of Wrath was an American nightmare, The Emigrants is about as pure a celebration of the American Dream as you’re going to find.  It lost the Oscar for Best Picture to a far different film about the immigrant experience in America, The Godfather.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: The Grapes of Wrath (dir by John Ford)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(With the Oscars scheduled to be awarded on March 4th, I have decided to review at least one Oscar-nominated film a day.  These films could be nominees or they could be winners.  They could be from this year’s Oscars or they could be a previous year’s nominee!  We’ll see how things play out.  Today, I take a look at the 1940 best picture nominee, The Grapes of Wrath!)

How dark can one mainstream Hollywood film from 1940 possibly be?

Watch The Grapes of Wrath to find out.

Based on the novel by John Steinbeck and directed by John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of the Joad family and their efforts to neither get sent to prison nor starve to death during the Great Depression.  When they lose their farm in Oklahoma, they head for California.  Pa Joad (Russell Simpson) has a flyer that says someone is looking for men and women to work as pickers out west.  The 12 members of the Joad Family load all of their possessions into a dilapidated old truck and they hit the road.  It quickly becomes apparent that they’re not the only family basing all of their hopes on the vague promises offered up by that flyer.  No matter how much Pa may claim different, it’s obvious that California is not going to be the promised land and that not all the members of the family are going to survive the trip.

Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) is the oldest of the Joad sons.  He’s just been released from prison and he’s killed in the past.  Having been in prison during the start of the Great Depression, Tom doesn’t realize how bad things truly are until he arrives home and sees someone he grew up with using a tractor to knock down a house.  (It’s just business, of course.  The owners of the house can’t pay their bills so the house gets destroyed.)  The film’s story is largely told through Tom’s eyes and Henry Fonda gives a sympathetic performance, one the gets the audience to empathize with and relate to a character who is a total outsider.

As for the rest of the Joad Family, Ma (Jane Darwell) is the glue who holds them together and who refuses to allow them to surrender to despair.  (And yet even Ma is forced to make some tough choices when the starving children of one work camp ask her to share her family’s meal with them.)  Rosasharan (Dorris Bowdon) is pregnant while Grandpa (Charley Grapewin) is too sickly for the trip but doesn’t have anywhere else to go.  And then there’s Casy (John Carradine), the former preacher turned labor organizer.  Casy is not blood-related but he soon becomes a member of the family.

The Joads have a healthy distrust of the police and other authority figures and that turns out to be a good thing because there aren’t many good cops to be found between Oklahoma and California.  Instead, the police merely serve to protect the rich from the poor.  Whenever the workers talk about forming a union and demanding more than 5 cents per box for their hard work, the police are there to break heads and arrest any troublemakers on trumped up charges.  Whenever a town decides that they don’t want any “Okies” entering the town and “stealing” jobs, the police are there to block the roads.

The Grapes of Wrath provides a portrait of the rough edges of America, the places and the people who were being ignored in 1940 and who are still too often ignored today.  John Ford may not be the first director that comes to mind when you think of “film noir” but that’s exactly what The Grapes of Wrath feels like.  During the night scenes, desperate faces emerge from the darkness while menacing figures lurk in the shadows.  When the sun does rise, the black-and-white images are so harsh that you almost wish the moon would return.  The same western landscape that Ford celebrated in his westerns emerges as a wasteland in The Grapes of Wrath.  The American frontier is full of distrust, anger, greed, and ultimately starvation.  (Reportedly, the film was often shown in the Soviet Union as a portrait of the failure of America and capitalism.  However, it was discovered that Soviet citizens were amazed that, in America, even a family as poor as the Joads could still afford a car.  The Grapes of Wrath was promptly banned after that.)  John Ford is often thought of as being a sentimental director but there’s little beauty or hope to be found in the images of The Grapes of Wrath.  (Just compare the way The Grapes of Wrath treats poverty to the way Ford portrayed it in How Green Was My Valley.)  Instead, the film’s only hint of optimism comes from the unbreakable familial bond that holds the Joads together.

As dark as it may be, the film is nowhere near as pessimistic as the original novel.  The novel ends with a stillborn baby and a stranger starving to death in a barn.  The film doesn’t go quite that far and, in fact, offers up some deus ex machina in the form of a sympathetic government bureaucrat.  (Apparently, authority figures weren’t bad as long as they worked for the federal government.)  That the book is darker than the movie is not surprising.  John Steinbeck was a socialist while John Ford was a Republican with a weakness for FDR.  That said, even though the film does end on a more hopeful note than the novel, you still never quite buy that things are ever going to get better for anyone in the movie.  You want things to get better but, deep down, you know it’s not going to happen.  Tom says that he’s going to fight for a better world and Fonda’s delivers the line with such passion that you want him to succeed even if you know he probably won’t.  Ma Joad says the people will never be defeated and, again, you briefly believe her even if there’s not much evidence to back her up.

Even when viewed today, The Grapes of Wrath is still a powerful film and I can only guess what it must have been like to see the film in 1940, when the Great Depression was still going on and people like the Joads were still making the journey to California.  Not surprisingly, it was nominated for best picture of 1940, though it lost to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca.

The Cloverfield Paradox – *Great Spoilers*

Posted on by casewright

 

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It’s Superbowl Sunday!!! Better yet, it’s The Cloverfield Paradox on Netflix.

This movie is 1 part – Event Horizon, 1 Part – The Thing, and 1 Part – Boring.

We begin with a dying earth and pesky scientists have tried to create a free energy machine innnnnnnn spaaaaaaace.  Sounds Legit.

There’s British people talking in traffic and I need closed captioning.  The lady in traffic is apparently an astronaut and “Comm Officer”. However, I can’t understand anything she’s saying; so maybe, communications wasn’t the best fit?!

We’re on the space station and they’re trying to do some particle acceleratin’ …woohoo, but something is amiss. The story is really dragging.

Now, there’s nerds, foozball playing, and awkward conversation.  Are we sure this is a Space Station and not the Google Campus?  I do like that all peoples are represented and they’re all boring.  It’s about time that we embraced that most people are boring and even some Netflix films.

They’re about to turn on their Shepherd Accelerator and …… they are making particles, energy, or s’mores?  Then, the Shepherd overloads.  I’m guessing they forgot to use a surge protector. They get control, but the earth is gone- must’ve left the Earth in their other solar system’s pants.  They’re hurtling into empty space.

The crew is starting to act weird.  The Russian- I’m going to call him Boris – is playing with his face a lot and we’re getting an Event Horizon vibe mostly because JJ Abrams decided to defile the memory of another one of my favorite films.  The steel walls have screaming and they decide to open it….because sure. They reveal a woman fused to wires and the bulkhead who knows the Comm Officer’s name.  It’s pretty gross.  They try to do some ER work on her and she lives.

Meanwhile….Back on Earth. There’s explosions!!!

Back on the station…

The foozball is playing itself and things are disappearing: gyroscopes, worms, and my time.   Boris has a worm creature in his head and it’s doing gross things to his eyeball.  Boris starts talking to himself and the voices in his head ask him to make a 3d printed gun.  Boris pulls the 3d printed gun on crewmates and dies with hundreds of worms shooting out of him.

The lady they found in the bulkhead – Mina – wakes up.  She thinks that she was on the station the whole time.  Mina accuses Schmidt of sabotage.  For scientists, they are unimpressive.  These dopes haven’t figured out that they’re in another dimension?! Did they get their PhDs from University of Phoenix?!  They lock Schmidt up for sabotage and proceed to make bad choices.

Back on earth…. More explosions, but now there are screaming kids.

Back on the station: The ship’s Irish janitor is doing repairs and his arm gets detached.  The ship let’s Schmidt out of the airlock and he’s being chased by the Irishman’s arm.  The arm writes them a letter….really. It tells them to cut Boris’ corpse open.  They find the gyroscope inside Boris.  The comms come back and their current reality is pretty bad.  They watch CNN and learn that they’ve traveled to Another Dimension …. Another Dimension … Don’t … you tell me to smile….Interplanetary.   In this dimension, there’s World War III going on and everybody has goatees.  They decide to turn on the Shepherd machine again and hopefully not attract a herd of sheep as well.

Back on earth, the Comm Officer’s husband has rescued a random kid and went to a bomb shelter.

Back on the Station:  Tam figures out that condensation was messing with their calculations, but then she drowns….somehow.  In the alternate dimension, Eva’s kids are alive.  In the “Good Dimension” Eva apparently installed some bad track lighting and killed everyone, but in this “Evil Dimension” – they’re fine because she used lamps I suppose.  Eva decides to go back to warn her twin not to use track lighting…..ever.  I’ve noticed that they do A LOT of caulking in this movie to exciting music, but it’s still a guy caulking. There’s another malfunction and half the ship explodes.

The crew decides that they need to de-couple the broken part of the station, engendering a long scene of attempted space station repair.  It was really slow AND they had this crazy 8-4pm window to do it.  Then, the captain sacrifices himself to do it because why not?

Eva orders that they turn on the shepherd.  All looks well, but Mina steals the gun and starts shooting.  She needs the “firing key” for some reason.  Presumably, the Shepherd will create energy, but that really makes no sense because it doesn’t create energy as much as derivative B-Movies.  Mina manages to kill Eva in the final scene Aliens style and it’s mildly entertaining.

Schmidt lives and they start the Shepherd again, but first she warns her evil twin not to use Track Lighting and to give the ball to Marshawn Lynch in the 2015 Super Bowl.  They see earth again- the good earth and they have a stable power beam.   Eva’s husband doesnt want them to come back because—-monsters.  Then, as the escape pod enters the atmosphere, we see a monster.  So, they unleashed monsters and NBC’s Whitney.

This was a great bad movie, which is what JJ Abrams can do in his sleep. I would watch this if I had the flu or was in a B-movie place.

The Lullaby: Preview, Review and trailer

Posted on by paddiesthoughts

Remember that sweet song your Mother sang to you as a child?

Poster

Cast:

Reine Swart as Chloe van Heerdon

Brandon Aruret as Dr. Timothy Reed

Shayla-Rae McFarlane as young Chloe

Preview:

Chloe is overwhelmed by the birth of her first child. The incessant crying of her baby, the growing sense of guilt and paranoia sends her into depression. With a heightened urge to protect her son, Chloe sees danger in every situation. She starts to hear voices, the humming of a childhood lullaby and sees flashes of a strange entity around her child. Convinced that the entity is real, Chloe will do everything in her power to protect her son. Is she haunted by evil or is it just the baby blues?

Review:

index Oh, Child, we got so much to talk about! Your Mama is not crazy, you are! Or are you? Or was you just twisting my mind?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Or is your Mom really crazy!

 

 

 

 

pic 3 Or your Grandma?

 

That sweet little song you Mom sang to you as a child… you know… that comforting song that always puts you into dream land… yeah, this movie might make you sleep different tonight!

Credits:

Uncork’d Entertainment presents a Phoenix Film with Valhalla Productions Directed by Darrell James Roodt

 

Trailer:

 

Would I recommend this movie:

Yep, absolutely! One of the best horror/thriller movies I have seen this year!

Where can you see it?

The Lullaby is opening in theaters and on VOD March 2, 2018

Oh, BTW:

No Spoilers, but Chloe is back….

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Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: The Lion in Winter (dir by Anthony Harvey)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(With the Oscars scheduled to be awarded on March 4th, I have decided to review at least one Oscar-nominated film a day.  These films could be nominees or they could be winners.  They could be from this year’s Oscars or they could be a previous year’s nominee!  We’ll see how things play out.  Today, I take a look at the 1968 best picture nominee, The Lion in Winter!)

“I don’t much like our children.”

— Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn)

“Oh God, but I do love being king.”

— King Henry II (Peter O’Toole)

“What family doesn’t have its up and down?”

— Eleanor of Aquitaine

To be honest, it’s tempting to just spend this entire review offering up quotes from this film.  Based on a play by James Goldman and featuring a cast of actors who all specialized in delivering the most snarky of lines with style, The Lion In Winter is a film that is in love with the English language.  As visually impressive as the film and its recreation of the 12th Century is, it’s tempting to close your eyes while watching The Lion In Winter and just listen to the dialogue.

The year is 1183.  England has a king.  His name is Henry II (Peter O’Toole) and he’s held power for a long time, through a combination of willpower and political manipulation.  He’s married to Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn), though he long since had her imprisoned.  Before marrying Henry, Eleanor was the wife of Louis VII.  Now, Henry’s mistress is Alais (Jane Merrow), the daughter of Louis and his second wife.  In order to get Alais’s dowry, Henry has promised her half-brother, Philip II (Timothy Dalton), that she will be married to the next king of England.  Philip, incidentally, is the son of Louis’s third wife.  To be honest, it’s confusing as Hell to try to keep up with all of it but that’s medieval politics for you.

Of course, everyone knows that Henry II will not be king forever.  He’s already 50 years old, which is quite an advanced age for 1183.  Being king means that everyone, even his own family, is plotting against him.  It also means living in a remarkably dirty and drafty castle.  (If you’re looking for a film that celebrates the splendor of royalty, this is probably not the film to watch.)  Henry has three sons, all of whom feel that he should be the rightful heir.

For instance, there’s Richard (a young Anthony Hopkins).  Richard is Henry and Eleanor’s eldest son.  He is a fierce, outspoken, and judgemental man.  He describes himself as being a legend and a poet.  He looks and acts like a future king.  Of course, he’s also a bit of a pompous ass.  Richard is Eleanor’s pick to be king, though Richard is always quick to equally condemn both of his parents.

And then there’s John (Nigel Terry).  Early on, John is described as being “pimply and smelling of compost.”  For some reason, John is Henry’s favorite.  He’s also a sniveling weakling, the type who is never smart enough to know when his father is being honest or when his father is bluffing.  Halfway through the film, he comes close to accidentally starting a civil war.

And finally, there’s Geoffrey (John Castle).  Geoffrey is the smartest of the princes and the most manipulative.  Of the three princes, he’s the only one who is as smart as both Henry and Eleanor.  However, whereas Henry and Eleanor enjoy their complicated lives and manage to maintain a sense of (very dark) humor about it all, Geoffrey is bitter about his place as the middle child.

Christmas has arrived and Henry has temporarily released Eleanor from prison so that she can spend the holidays with him, his sons, and his mistress.  Also coming over for the holiday is King Phillip II, eager to either take back his sister’s dowry or to attend her wedding to the next King of England.  What follows is a holiday of politics, manipulation, and shouting.  In fact, there’s lots and lots of shouting.

It’s a thoroughly enjoyable film, one that expertly mixes British history with domestic drama and dark comedy.  Obviously, the film’s main appeal comes from watching two screen icons, Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn, exchanging snappy dialogue.  Hepburn deservedly won an Oscar for her performance as Eleanor.  O’Toole should have won an Oscar as well but he lost to Cliff Robertson for Charly.  In fact, O’Toole and Hepburn are so good that they occasionally overshadow the rest of the very talented cast.  Anthony Hopkins and Nigel Terry both make indelible impressions as Richard and John but my favorite princely performance came from John Castle, who is a malicious wonder as Geoffrey.  As easy as it is to dislike Geoffrey, it’s hard not to feel that he does have a point.

(Of course, in real life, both Richard and John would eventually serve as king while Geoffrey would die, under mysterious circumstances, in France.  Reportedly, Philip II was so distraught over Geoffrey’s death that he attempted to jump on the coffin as it was being lowered into the ground.)

The Lion In Winter was nominated for seven Oscars and won three, for Best Actress (Katharine Hepburn), Best Adapted Screenplay (James Goldman), and Best Music Score (John Barry).  It lost best picture to Oliver!

Dear Old Alma Mater: John Wayne in TROUBLE ALONG THE WAY (Warner Brothers 1953)

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

Tomorrow’s the big night, as my New England Patriots go up against the tough defense of the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LII. Tom Brady and company will be going for Ring #6, and everyone here in Southern New England is super excited, looking forward to another victory celebration! I’ll be attending a huge party with plenty of food, big screen TV’s, raffles, squares, and like-minded fans, but before the festivities begin, let’s take a look at TROUBLE ALONG THE WAY, a football-themed film starring none other than Big John Wayne !

St. Anthony’s College is a struggling Catholic university run by sweet old Father Burke, who’s getting to be as decrepit as the school itself. The powers-that-be want to close his beloved St. Anthony’s, seeing how the school’s $170,000 in debt, but old Father Burke comes up with an idea. Citing Deuteronomy 32:15 (“The beloved grew fat and kicked”)…

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Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Grand Illusion (dir by Jean Renoir)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(With the Oscars scheduled to be awarded on March 4th, I have decided to review at least one Oscar-nominated film a day.  These films could be nominees or they could be winners.  They could be from this year’s Oscars or they could be a previous year’s nominee!  We’ll see how things play out.  Today, I take a look at the 1937 best picture nominee, Grand Illusion!)

A few things to consider when watching Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion:

It is considered to be one of the greatest French films of all time and yet, at the outbreak of World War II, it was banned by France pour la durée des hostilités.  It was also banned by Nazi Germany, with Joseph Goebbles declaring it to be “Cinematic Public Enemy No, 1.”  Italy followed suit, banning the film as well.

It’s a pacifist film but all of the main characters are soldiers.

It’s a war film but we never see any battles.  We hear about them, of course.  Characters cheer when they hear that their country has taken another town.  Towards the end of the film, when a gun finally is fired, it’s jarring because it’s the first gunshot that we’ve heard throughout the entire film.

It’s a film about change, specifically the change brought about by the First World War.  Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) may be French and Major von Rauffenstein (Erich van Stroheim) may be German but they both share the bond of being aristocrats.  (After Rauffenstein captures Boeldieu, the two of them have a friendly conversation about their shared acquaintances.)  Both of them serve in the army, not for ideological reasons but because they consider themselves to be patriots and tradition holds that aristocrats go to war for their countries.  At the start of the film, both Boeldieu and Rauffenstein seem to be above the fighting but, in the end, both realize that the old ways — their ways — will not survive in the new world that’s being created by the Great War.

(In another scene, a group of Russian soldiers are excited to receive a care package from “the Czarina,” just to open up the box and discover that, instead of Vodka, they’ve been sent used textbooks.  The soldiers respond by setting the box on fire.  For audiences in 1937, it would be impossible to watch this scene without reflecting on the fact that the Czarina herself would soon be dead, executed by revolutionaries.)

Grand Illusion tells the story of three French officers, prisoners of war who hope to somehow escape and make their way to neutral Switzerland.  Unlike the aristocratic Boeldieu, Marechal (Jean Gabin) is a member of the working class, a mechanic.  Lt. Rosnethal (Marcel Dalio) comes from a wealthy family but, as a Jew, he is still viewed as an outsider.  (Reportedly, Renoir specifically made Grand Illusion‘s most sympathetic and generous character Jewish as a specific rebuke to Nazi Germany and their policies.)  It’s Rosenthal who gives meaning to the film’s title when he says, regarding the belief that the great war will end all other wars, “That’s just an illusion.”

All three of them are moved from prison camp to prison camp, until they eventually find themselves at the camp commanded by the man who first captured both Boeldieu and Marechal, Major van Rauffenstein.  Rauffenstein explains that he was given his new post after being seriously wounded in combat and his movements are sometimes so stiff that he almost resembles a marionette, suggesting that war has reduced this proud man to merely being a puppet for his government’s war machine.

Grand Illusion is a film about the forgotten people who get caught up in the madness of war.  The French POWs may say they want to return to the front but, when they meet a woman who has lost her husband and three brothers to the war, they are reminded that even “victory” comes with a steep price.  Rauffenstein and Boeldiue may share much in common but ultimately, the only thing that the world cares about is that one is French and one is German.  Grand Illusion was Jean Renoir’s eloquent plea for peace, issued a mere two years before Europe plunged into World War II.

In 1938, Grand Illusion was the first foreign-language film to receive an Oscar nomination for best picture.  However, it lost to Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You.

 

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing (dir by Henry King)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(With the Oscars scheduled to be awarded on March 4th, I have decided to review at least one Oscar-nominated film a day.  These films could be nominees or they could be winners.  They could be from this year’s Oscars or they could be a previous year’s nominee!  We’ll see how things play out.  Today, I take a look at the 1955 best picture nominee, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing!)

Before I talk about Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing, let’s play a little trivia game.

I’m going to list ten films.  Your job is to guess what they all have in common:

Did you guess?  All ten of these films came out in 1955 and not a single one of them was nominated for best picture.  That’s something that I found myself thinking about quite a bit as I watched Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing on TCM last night.  Of course, at this point, everyone knows that deserving films are often ignored by the Academy and that what seems like a great film during one year can often seem to be rather forgettable in subsequent years.

So, you can probably guess that I wasn’t terribly impressed with Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing but, before I get too critical, I want to start things off on a positive note.  William Holden was, without a doubt, one of the best actors to ever appear in the movies.  He started his film career in the 1930s and worked regularly until his death in 1981.  Just consider some of the films in which Holden appeared: Golden Boy, Our Town, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Sabrina, Picnic, Network, and so many others.  Of course, not every film in which Holden appeared was a masterpiece.  He made his share of films like Damien: Omen II and When Time Ran Out.  But the thing is that, regardless of the film, Holden was always good.

That’s certainly the case with Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing.  It’s not one of Holden’s better films but William Holden is his usual dependable self.  He plays Mark Elliott, a rugged American correspondent who is living in Hong Kong in the 1940s.  While the Chinese Civil War rages nearby, Mark deals with his failing marriage.  His wife is back in the States.  They’re separated but not quite divorced.  Mark owns a really nice car and, since he’s played by William Holden, he delivers the most world-weary of lines with an undeniable panache.  He also appears shirtless for a good deal of the film.  Between this and Picnic, 1955 was the year of the shirtless Holden.

The problem with Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing is not with William Holden.  Instead, the problem is with the miscasting of Jennifer Jones as Han Suyin, the woman with whom Mark Elliott falls in love.  Han Suyin was a real-life person, a doctor who wrote the autobiographical novel on which Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing was based.  Han Suyin was Eurasian.  Jennifer Jones most definitely was not.  Throughout the film, Han Suyin and Mark often discuss what it’s like to be Eurasian and to be in the middle of two very different cultures.  There’s even a discussion about whether Han Suying should try to pass as European.  It all has the potential to be very interesting except for the fact that Jennifer Jones, who was so good in so many films, is in no way convincing in her role.  Whenever she mentions being Eurasian, which she does frequently, the film come to a halt as we all stare at Jennifer Jones, one of the first film stars to ever come out of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

It all leads to a rather strained movie, one that never really drew me into its cinematic world or story.  (For the record, a lot of people on twitter disagreed with me on this point.)  Ultimately, the main reason to watch it was for William Holden.  According to the film’s Wikipedia entry (how’s that for in-depth research), Holden and Jones reportedly did not get along during filming, with Jones apparently chewing garlic before their love scenes and there was a definite lack of chemistry between them.  Maybe I got spoiled by William Holden and Kim Novak dancing in Picnic but I never believed that Mark and Han Suyin were attracted to each other.  Interestingly, Jones and Holden would later both appear in another best picture nominee, 1974’s The Towering Inferno.  However, they didn’t share any scenes.

Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing was nominated for best picture but it lost to a far different love story, Marty.  This was also the final film directed by Henry King to be nominated for best picture.  Previous King films to be nominated included State Fair, In Old Chicago, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, The Song of Bernadette, Wilson, and Twelve O’Clock High.