Name that Movie #4
Category Archives: Romance
The Danish Girl (2015)
This is such a heavy handed Oscar grab. In a year with Caitlin Jenner, Orange is the New Black, and Transparent, I think most people are looking for a deeper look at this subject, but this film never gets deeper than the pretty pictures and scenery. In our all-inclusive political climate, even I feel the pressure to speak nicely of a film like this lest I feel the wrath of the left wing battering me for being some kind of sexist bigot. If I want to watch Eddie Redmayne transform before my eyes, I will dust off Theory of Everything from last yea. But in this film, I never get past feeling bad for his/her wife and being tremendously thankful that they didn’t have children. I don’t want to waste more time on this film than I must. There are much better offerings to discuss this year, and I hope that the Academy can see through this feeble attempt by Tom Hooper to continue is award winning streak by playing on the hot topic of the year with one of the best new actors out there.
Name That Movie #3
In Memorium: Alan Rickman (1946-2016)
I don’t really feel like blathering on about Alan Rickman’s acting achievements. I feel like all of you know how amazing he was, and he will live forever in his many, varied roles. Please take a few moments to look through the pictures below. Think about your favorite of his roles. Leave a comment to tell me how you remember him best.
You can tell by the banner image that my favorite of his roles is actually in Kevin Smith’s Dogma. He appropriately plays the Metatron, the voice of God. I love that deep, gravelly voice. That is why I posted this from Family Guy:
Rest in Peace Alan. You will be missed.
Name that Movie #1
Vertigo (1958)
Vertigo is a psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film stars Jimmy Stewart as a former police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson, who has been forced into early retirement due to his discovery of crippling acrophobia and vertigo. Scottie is hired as a private investigator to follow a woman, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) who is behaving peculiarly. The film received mixed reviews upon initial release, but has garnered acclaim since and is now often cited as one of the defining works of his career. It is currently listed at #65 on the IMDb Top 250, which I think is a travesty. It shows you what type of list the IMDb Top 250 is, to see this film and others, like Citizen Kane, outside of the top 50, but The Dark Knight currently holds the #4 place. But in the 2012 British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound critics’ poll, it replaced Citizen Kane as the best film of all time and has appeared repeatedly in best film polls by the American Film Institute.
I have to confess. This is one of those movies that you hear about and want to watch because others say it is so good. I’ve had it on my watch-list for years. This was one of the many Alfred Hitchcock films that my parents owned. But for some reason, unlike North by Northwest or The Birds or Psycho, I just never got around to watching this one. But I finally tackled this one on Saturday last year and have been digesting it ever since. This draft has literally been sitting in my project pile since March 2013 and if WordPress is correct in its count, I have made 67 different revisions in that time. Well, I finally watched it again tonight with the purpose of finishing what I started.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b69YGZizcKc
Ebert’s Great Movies Review from 1996
*** SPOILER ALERT *** Because of the nature of this film, I must warn anyone who reads further on that the rest of this review will contain spoilers. Please take the time to watch this classic before reading any more. *** SPOILER ALERT *** Continue reading Vertigo (1958)
Day 20 – 30 Day Movie Challenge
Favorite Movie by Your Favorite Actor and Actress
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I like this category so much that I am going to break it into two days and do my favorite legacy actor and actress today, and my favorite modern actor and actress tomorrow. Of course, this will turn the 30 Day Movie Challenge into a 31 Day Movie Challenge, but I don’t mind. I have no criteria to separate these except that the classic stars must no longer be making films. Tomorrow, I will get around to my favorite modern actor and actress, but in the meantime…
My favorite classic actor is Jimmy Stewart. He was a tremendously prolific studio actor who worked with all the famous actors and directors of his day. He was known for his performances as an everyman, much like Tom Hanks today. And his beautiful co-star in Rear Window just so happens to be my favorite classic actress, Grace Kelly. She only acted for five years from 1951-1956, but she made a tremendous impact in those five short years even winning an Oscar for acting alongside Bing Crosby in the 1954 film The Country Girl. Sadly, her acting career was cut short by her untimely marriage to Prince Rainier of Monaco. By becoming a princess, she gave up her acting career. However, I don’t know that I have ever seen a more beautiful or talented actress grace the screen.
In Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart plays a professional photographer named L.B. Jeffries who breaks his leg while getting an action shot at an auto race. Confined to his New York apartment during a heat wave, “Jeff” spends his time looking out of the rear window observing the neighbors. He begins to suspect that a man across the courtyard may have murdered his wife. He enlists the help Grace Kelly’s character (a high society fashion-consultant girlfriend named Lisa Freemont) and his visiting nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) to investigate the situation. Rear Window is currently listed on the IMDB top 250 at #22. It is one of my favorite movies, it has comedy, suspense, and romance.
Day 18 – 30 Day Movie Challenge
A Movie That You Wish More People Would’ve Seen
Today’s challenge was simple. If I can only recommend one movie to anyone, it is this delightful gem from Roberto Benigni. And it is a rare occasion that they have already seen it. I wonder what prevents people from seeing this film. Is it the fact that it is a foreign film or maybe that there are no recognizable movie stars in it? Perhaps it is the fact that the subject matter is generally so depressing. But the funny yet haunting Life Is Beautiful, is quite possibly the best most satisfying movie I have ever seen.
Life Is Beautiful is the story of clever Italian waiter named Guido Orefice (played masterfully by writer and director Benigni himself). Over in Germany, Hitler is making his malevolent preparations, but for the first half of the film, world politics are only a backdrop to Guido’s comic attempts to woo a beautiful schoolteacher named Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), away from her fiance. Benigni’s brand of physical comedy reminds me of Charlie Chaplin. He even has touches of political satire a la Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, for instance, Guido’s automobile has malfunctioning brakes and his frantic waving people out of the way is mistaken for stiff-armed salutes. But where Life Is Beautiful turns into something rare and extraordinary is not until midway through the film.
Fast-forwarding a few years, Guido, now owns a small bookstore. Guido and Dora have married and have a young son. It wasn’t until writing this review that I found that his son’s name is “Joshua” spelled Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini). A Nazi presence is now creeping into their Italian town, and signs have begun to appear in shop windows: “No Dogs or Jews Allowed” Guido, who we learn is Jewish himself, jokes to a confused Giosue that he should put up a sign on their store: “No Spiders or Visigoths Allowed.” The film shifts gears when his family is arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Dora, who is not Jewish, chooses to follow her husband and child. It is at this point that Life Is Beautiful changes into a very different film. I was impressed at how seamlessly the comedy moved into the world of the death camps.
It’s a risky transition, as Guido continues to struggle to shield his son from its harsh realities and atrocities of the Holocaust, but Benigni handles it with class. He accomplishes this minor miracle by shifting the focus and audience of his humor to Giosue. He makes the camp and its officers look foolish not to make us laugh but to spare his beloved son from the trauma of this horror. Some detractors see it as making light of tragedy, but they fail to realize is that its humor does not make light of the genocide but rather exalts the sacrifice of a parent.
Do you have any lesser known gems in mind that you would recommend to everyone? I watch a lot of movies that every one else passes up. I hope you will share some with me in the comments below or on Twitter or Facebook.
Day 12 – 30 Day Movie Challenge
A Movie That You Hate
Hate is an emotion that takes energy. I could list dozens of movies here that I didn’t care to see or didn’t enjoy seeing. But a movie that I hate is very rare. I am able to see the bright side of almost anything. Instead, I am going to talk about the only movie that ever made me walk out of the theater, which is Rob Roy. I went to see Rob Roy with my mom, probably because I mistook it for Braveheart (which was actually released almost two full months after this movie). But after only a half an hour, a woman (Jessica Lange) is punched in the stomach, hit in the face and dragged by the hair. She is then put over a table and raped in a very long and quite brutal scene. As a 12-year-old that was enough for me, and I was out of there. On a side note, this is one of the reasons that I love all the tools that are now on the internet so parents can know what objectionable material is in a movie before taking their kids. But this isn’t a movie that I hate, that scene simply dredged up some great emotions in me and that is to the credit of Tim Roth who plays a great villain. He is very good at making everyone in the audience hate him with a passion. This is a movie that I need to watch again because I have always spoken badly of it because of that scene.
Do you have a movie that you simply hate? Have you walked out of the theater? What happened? Let me know your story in the comments below or on Facebook or Twitter.
Day 10 – 30 Day Movie Challenge
Favorite Classic Movie
This was another category that suffered from the use of vague language. What is a classic movie? What criteria would you use to define a classic? I think what determines a classic film is the same thing that determines a classic piece of literature: the test of time. No film or literature of substandard quality will survive that test. The key to passing this test of time is a work’s universal appeal. This asks for my favorite, not the most classic, so I am pleased to share my favorite classic movie, North By Northwest.
Alfred Hitchcock made so many movies, but there are three in particular that are generally considered to be his best: Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960). North by Northwest was nominated for Academy Awards for its screenplay, art direction, and editing, but lost all three to Ben-Hur. It placed 40th on the American Film Institute’s 1998 list of the best movies of all time, and it has consistently ranked in the top 50 as ranked by IMDB users.
The 1950s were a great decade for Alfred Hitchcock. He had so many hits with Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. He also had a TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. But in 1958, Vertigo was released and failed to impress critics or audiences. Hitchcock was undoubtedly disappointed by this and couldn’t know that Vertigo would eventually be considered one of his masterpieces. But he vowed that his next project would be a more tested and tried effort that would be more of a crowd-pleaser. The film was a box-office hit, second only to Ben-Hur for the year, and got positive reviews from critics.
It starred Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill a New York advertising executive who is mistakenly identified as a secret government agent, this put a target on his back. Then he’s framed for murder, this puts him on the run from the police as well as the bad guys. While on the run, he meets Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who apparently believes his story and wants to help. I’m not going to give you any more about the plot because I want everyone to see it. It has so many iconic scenes and it is still powerful today. It influenced a whole genre of action-suspense-espionage movies. Only three years after its release, the first James Bond film, Dr. No, appeared. Of course, James Bond is a spy, whereas Roger Thornhill was only mistaken for one. But both films have implausible action sequences in outrageous locations like Mount Rushmore. They both have beautiful but mysterious women who take an interest in the hero. And both have a well-dressed leading man who is suave, has a knack for one-liners, a fondness for liquor. You can probably think of dozens of movies since 1959 that have operated on those same principles.
With North by Northwest, Hitchcock tweaked the basic man-on-the-run story with witty dialogue, charismatic performances, and visually arresting action sequences. He demonstrated that these elements of basic popular entertainment, which are sadly looked down upon by some who call themselves critics, could be applied to big-budget studio films. He showed that a movie could be entertaining, thrilling, and funny, smart and well-produced. It didn’t have to choose to be either high-brow or low-brow. North By Northwest is an extremely entertaining thrill ride. There is not a lot of substance or meaning to it, it is just a tremendously fun roller coaster ride that Hitchcock takes us on. When I first saw it as a kid, I was hooked. And it set a precedent for hundreds of blockbusters that followed in its wake.