THE BAND WAGON
****½
THE BIG HEAT
***½
FROM HERE TO ETERNITY
****
GENEVIEVE
****
GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES
***½
GLEN OR GLENDA?
***
USA
A sensationalist but clearly heartfelt case study. Generally hailed as the worst or
second-worst film ever made. But the sheer incompetence makes it hilarious,
fascinating and oddly endearing.
dir: Ed Wood
cast: Ed Wood, Dolores Fuller, Bela Lugosi
THE GOLDEN COACH
***
THE HITCH-HIKER
***½
USA
Through the 1930s and 40s, Ida Lupino made money as 'the poor man's
Bette Davis'. By the 1950s, she became one of the few women directors
working in Hollywood. She made a string of obscure though generally
well-regarded B-features, of which this is probably the most popular. It's
an efficient little suspenser about a disturbed hitch-hiker on a murderous
rampage. You remember it as the one with the psycho killer that sleeps
with one eye open.
dir: Ida Lupino
cast: Edmond O'Brien, Frank Lovejoy, William Talman, Jose
Torvay, Sam Hayes
HOUSE OF WAX
**½
USA
The screen's first feature film to be shot and projected in 3-D was in
fact directed by the one-eyed André de Toth. Presumably his depth
perception skills would have been compromised and so, he would have likely missed
out on the second-most memorable thing about his own picture. The most
memorable is the incomparably smarmy Vincent Price whose first chance to
don a plastic face this was.
Otherwise, for a heroine we have a bargain basement version of Jane
Wyman and for a turn-of-the-century New York gaslit bits of cardboard from
the Warners backlot. It's essentially just a B-movie awkwardly dressed up
as an A-grade attraction.
The Region 4 DVD edition has as a special feature the infinitely
more worthwhile original Mystery
of the Wax Museum (1933) in full.
dir: André de Toth
cast: Vincent Price, Carolyn Jones, Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis
Kirk, Paul Picerni, Roy Roberts, Angela Clarke
HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE
***½
I CONFESS
**½
JULIUS CAESAR
**
KISS
ME KATE
***½
USA
Limp backstage farce about the staging of a musical version of "The
Taming of the Shrew" serves - and often takes far too long - to
connect the numbers. But the numbers are worth the patience: Ann Miller,
who's patently delighted to be part of the show and whose delight is
catching, gets to hypnotise you with her legs in "Too Darn Hot";
she joins up with the very stylish Tommy Rall on "Why Can't You
Behave?"; non-singers and non-dancers Keenan Wynn and James
Whitmore have terrific fun with their shortcomings in "Brush Up Your
Shakespeare"; and, most strikingly, there is cinema's first glimpse
of the Bob Fosse style still in its formative stages but already
electrifying (particularly in this context) in the climactic "From
This Moment on".
dir: George Sydney
cast: Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, Ann Miller, Tommy Rall,
Bobby Van, Keenan Wynn, James Whitmore, Kurt Kasznar, Bob Fosse,
Ron Randell, Willard Parker
MADAME DE...
****
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MR. HULOT'S
HOLIDAY
***½
France
Jacques Tati's second film isn't necessarily as remarkable as you may have
heard, but it's amiable.
The setting is a beach resort that seems to have been
especially constructed to resemble every other beach resort. It's the
archetypal beach resort. It's clean, serene and antiseptic but not
dehumanised like the settings for Tati's later films became. This one
still has some warmth to it, though it lacks the charming little details
of the country town in "Jour de fete" which made you feel like
you're visiting somewhere special. That picture left you in a state of
bliss that even stuck around for a couple days after. On the other hand
you barely remember this picture at all once it's over. But while it's on,
it's perfectly enjoyable.
You can see a lot of the jokes coming and it often takes a
bit longer than necessary for them to go nowhere unexpected. But they're
delivered in a good-natured, giving spirit. Tati has an innocence about
him that, no matter how contrived, is still a bit irresistible.
dir: Jacques Tati
cast: Jacques Tati, Nathalie Pascaud, Louis Perrault, Michelle
Rolla, André Dubois, Suzy Willy, Valentine Camax, Lucien Fregis
THE
NAKED SPUR
****½
USA
The third in the series of taut, hardboiled Westerns Anthony Mann made
together with James Stewart. Jimmy plays a dejected bountyhunter forced to
trust a couple of patently untrustworthy people to help him transport a
wanted criminal across the Colorado Rockies (the real ones - no back
projection).
Like a lot of the Mann-Stewart collaborations, this one's
notable for eschewing heroics or even a single figure of irreproachable
decency, for a blistering lead performance, as well as for a screenplay
without an ounce of fat.
dir: Anthony Mann
wr: Sam Rolfe, Harold Jack Bloom
cast: James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker,
Millard Mitchell
NIAGARA
***½
PETER PAN
***½
PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET
****
USA
A pickpocket inadvertently ends up with a
Communist microfilm.
A taut, tense and violent espionage thriller, with strong acting and a fair share of
implausibilities made temporarily plausible.
dir: Samuel Fuller
cast: Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter,
Murvyn Vye, Richard Kiley
ROMAN HOLIDAY
***½
SALT OF THE EARTH
***½
SHANE
****½
STALAG 17
***
USA
A Nazi spy is posing as one of the fellas and
leaking out crucial information to his officials in a WWII POW camp.
An awkward and claustrophobic mix of comedy and a thriller, psychological
and otherwise. It's mainly the comedy that's awkward.
dir: Billy Wilder
cast: William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger,
Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Richard Erdman, Peter Graves, Neville
Brand, Sig Rumann
TOKYO STORY
*****
UGETSU MONOGATARI
*****
Japan
The post-Rashomon era was a terrific one for Japanese cinema in that not
only did it bring forth several of the greatest films ever made, but these
masterpieces were also assured of the international exposure that would
have eluded them just a few years earlier. One of the major beneficiaries
of Kurosawa's success was Kenji Mizoguchi's rich, serene ghost
story/morality tale, which cleaned up at international film festivals
before making it into many highly respected top tens.
Adapted from two stories by Akinari Ueda (a staple of 18th
Century Japanese literature), it concerns the vacillating fortunes of two
peasant couples during the feudal wars of the 1860s. The plot has the
makings of a vast, sweeping saga, but the film's most arresting sequences
are its most intimate. Mizoguchi intersperses his wise observations on
human fundamentals like greed, desire and patriarchy with the utmost
elegance, taking great care not to interrupt the dreamy flow and poetry
you'd expect of a piece titled "Tales of a Pale and Mysterious Moon
After the Rain".
dir: Kenji Mizoguchi
ph: Kazuo Miyagawa
m: Fumio Hayasaka, Tamekichi Mochizuki, Ichirô Saitô
cast: Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyô, Kinuyo Tanaka, Eitarô
Ozawa, Mitsuko Mito, Ikio Sawamura, Kikue Môri, Ryosuke Kagawa
I VITELLONI
****
THE WAGES OF FEAR
*****
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