jazzfantastic Reviews

It Happened in Brooklyn (1947)

Small Gem!

[8/10 · 22 January 2010]

What a find! I've never seen Sinatra so appealing nor Durante quite that young! Lawford is all warmth, charm, and sincerity, and Grayson, is, well, Grayson the Divine Singer. Great film about everyday people with aspirations and heart.

The plot is inspiring, the people affecting, the ending excellent, and the score wonderful. I disagree that there was too much opera, and I personally got a kick out of seeing Frankie sing opera w/Grayson. I don't know from 'Lakme', but Grayson was divine looking and sounding in that scene. Found this on VHS for $1, and feel mighty privileged to have seen it. Durante was quite remarkable in a far longer role than the small turns I've previously seen him in.

This Property Is Condemned (1966)

Very Well Done Tragedy

[8/10 · 5 April 2009]

Re-watched this after many years and am surprised anew how good it is. The screenplay is key to its quality, since the one-act play by Williams did not have Alva and Owen as fleshed-out characters. Coppola co-wrote the screenplay with two other writers.

Redford and Wood had great chemistry. They looked fabulous together. Man, he had a ton of hair! It was wonderful to see him come alive and find his emotions after Alva entered his life and he temporarily lost her. Wood was luminous, impossibly thin and beautiful. She portrayed the fragility and sensitivity of Alva extremely well. The settings and costumes were excellent, especially Alva's home-made skin-tight clothes, the huge rooming house, the streets of New Orleans.

The mom (Kate Reid) was also very well done. She humanized what could have been a monster character. After all, she and the kids were abandoned by her husband, and she was trying to support everyone in an era when there was no social welfare support, and apparently no relatives to turn to. Her pimping of Alva is not all that unusual in such circumstances, nor Alva's conflicted feelings towards her mom and her felt duty to help support the family and keep a full house at the inn. Williams was brave to explicate these real human dynamics, and to show compassion for all the characters.

Poor Willy is the final victim, abandoned and unsupported after Alva's premature death. One would hope Owen could've recovered his innate humanity and helped Willy out, if only as his final link to Alva. It's possible he self-destructed and closed up when his angel woman was revealed by mom to have done considerable wrong in the eyes of the society of that time. He was a man of his time, after all, and women were either angels or whores. Today Alva's 'crimes' would be fixed relatively easily and with little or no condemnation. People make mistakes and do some bad things to each other, but they can be forgiven. Perhaps forgiveness was not Owen's strong suit.

The movie is directed very well. It's well paced and leaves you concerned for the fates of all the characters. Nice of Willy (and the screenwriters) to mention what happened to momma and Alva. The film is so engaging that we'd like to know what happened to Owen too, and why Willy ended up alone, abandoned in the railroad town the family fled.

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

Hurrah!

[10/10 · 5 April 2009]

Maximum charm! True romantic philosophy, told with flair, warmth, wit, and humor. Portrays a close-knit functional group of English 30-somethings seeking and finding The One, in this case, apparently entirely at weddings. Must be an English thing (smile). All the principals are good. Grant is especially good at being bemused and slightly inept. What a head of hair! MacDowell is radiant, mysterious, and emotionally unattainable, as required. Far more variety in personality types, socioeconomic class, and personal situations than most romantic comedies of its time. Great screenplay! Happy Endings all 'round. Hurrah!

Cadillac Records (2008)

Good Film

[6/10 · 14 February 2009]

The look and realities of the time--costumes, sets, vehicles, mores, etc. are persuasive. The legal segregation; the harassment and discrimination--are a potent reminder of how we marginalized and humiliated Black citizens. Amazing that in the midst of all that repression, brutality, and poverty, some very talented Black Americans could be discovered, recorded, and celebrated. Kudos to the Chess brothers.

Sad that the performers depicted were, or were shown as, so hedonistic and self-destructive. Several are given purportedly anguished childhoods as excuses for their pain and flight to drugs and bad behavior, but we know from modern celebs that youth from middle and upper class families with no discernible deprivations or skeletons can go just as stupid when given big money, fame, and adulation at a young age.

The characters were all interesting. Muddy Water's wife had some VERY affecting moments, as when confronted with yet another example of his promiscuity and complete lack of regard for her feelings and status as his girlfriend, and later, wife. You just wanted to punch him in the face for being such a pig. Yet she stuck by him, and in the film, chose to raise one of his illegitimate offspring. Lots of parallels to political wives.

Leonard Chess was portrayed as decent and what we would call paternalistic. And it was like presiding over a herd of children and adolescents, a constant theme in movies about the backstory of Hollywood. Apparently the record industry is/was no different.

I have no issue w/the movie leaving out the second brother in order to focus on Leonard, but from what I read online etc., don't look for excessive historical validity in the details about any particular historical figure in the film.

Enjoyed the film for many reasons. Biggest Gripe: half the dialogue could not be understood, and half of the other half consisted of the word "M-f'r", used as noun, pronoun, and every conceivable part of speech, positively, negatively, and neutrally. By the final frame, when they ? fondly ? called the now-deceased Leonard by that term, I had no idea of the real meaning and their real feelings for him. The word was used so much and with every conceivable meaning that I lost touch with what they meant or felt about him.

He got flack for allegedly withholding or cheating them of royalties. So did Berry Gordy and about every other record producer in the world. He did a lot of good for them, for the genre and the country.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

Incrediby Good Film!

[10/10 · 25 December 2008]

This is a very charming and funny film from a more innocent era in American life. You get to see a real Macy's Thanksgiving parade, as well as representations of dedicated retail employees (!), one of whom (O'Hara) portrays an early professional woman and single working mom in the male-dominated world of retail management.

The film's historical value alone has merit. Watch for the Macy's resource book of other key New York City retail establishments. See how many you remember or recognize! How many still exist 60 years later?

You can watch this film a dozen times and still find new things and bits of business to amuse you. The creativity of the script, combined with the expressiveness of voice, face, and body language on the part of all the excellent actors involved--many uncredited but with huge resumes--is a joy to behold, again and again. And the Hats, Ladies, the Hats! O'Hara and Wood have the greatest hats and matching coats ever!

The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999 TV Movie)

Interesting, Enlightening, Superb Performances

[7/10 · 8 December 2008]

As a casual viewer with a cursory knowledge of Rand and her movement, this film, shown through the eyes of someone who had good reason to bear Rand some resentment, was enlightening about Rand and her background, her circle, and to a lesser degree, her movement and philosophy. It's very worth seeing for those things, as well as the excellent performances of all concerned.

I fault the Director for not aging the characters over the 15-17-yr. span, especially the pivotal role of Branden. By the time Branden takes a young student as his lover, he was old enough to be her father, just as Rand was old enough to be his mother when their affair commenced. Not even his weight, attire, or hair were modified, much less his baby face, to show how the passage of time would've affected who he did and didn't find appealing as a lover and life partner by the time he was 40'ish and Rand 60-65.

Rand's pain and fury over losing his love and sex and being dumped for a girl young enough to be her grandchild apparently sealed his fate in the Movement, so failing to age the characters was a key error in an otherwise well-done film.

Rand had the spirit and confidence to go after a man half her age, and the magnetism to land and hold him. Women past 40 are normally confined to older men, and much older, the older the woman becomes. Refreshing. Rand was shown to find the sexual affair intensely pleasant and intellectually freeing, as creative men do. In fact, Rand acted the traditional male role throughout the film, her husband the female role. Also refreshing.

The conscious attempts by all Movement characters to make their actions conform to their belief system was one of the things that consistently elevated this film above a simple adultery drama. Hence, Rand and Branden sought their spouses' consent for their affair, even if they underestimated its duration by a factor of 15 years. Branden and Barbara married as a heroic act despite lack of personal 'fit', etc.

Only Branden seemed to be consistently weak and therefore prone to violating Movement principles via lies and obfuscation, and even he proved to be capable of emotional growth by the end. An interesting and enlightening film with superb performances.

Queen Kelly (1932)

A Luminous "Queen Kelly"

[9/10 · 14 July 2006]

The restored version of "Queen Kelly' shown on TCM recently was a revelation to those of us who only knew Gloria Swanson from "Sunset Boulevard" in the '50's. Swanson in 1928 had incredibly large and luminous (?green?) eyes, as well as that curiously angular lower jaw still evident in "Boulevard". She seemed fairly tall and almost husky in "Kelly", compared to many women (and men) of the 20's to the 50's who were physically quite small, and looked it in their screen roles. She was lovely in a unique way.

More importantly, I thought Swanson was GREAT in the part. What an incredible range of facial and body expressiveness! Given the restrictions of the plot, and doubtless a domineering director, Swanson did a tremendous job in making her character seem believable. Yes, perhaps she did look older than 18, but in my opinion, she could pass for 21 or so. She certainly didn't look older than her 31 years, as another reviewer opines. Perhaps her sheer acting skill and range of motion were convincing enough to play 10 years younger than her true age. It's done all the time on the stage and screen, why wouldn't it be acceptable in this 1928 film?

I found Walter Byron gorgeous, and strangely modern in his good looks. Not of the now-hackneyed strong-profile leading man variety popular in early films. Instead, he was impeccably groomed and costumed, with short, straight, slicked-back hair. A beautiful sight to behold. He did a very good job within the constraints of silent acting. I'll be looking for more of his work.

The Jan VanHeidt character was almost too-disgusting to be credible, but archetypes were more pronounced in the silent genre. The actor did a very credible job, doubtless under the director's specific instructions about how to convey his debauched and depraved condition.

Perhaps it's because so much of the film was lost and/or cut, but Kelly's acquiescence to marrying the dissolute Jan seemed inexplicable to me. Von Stoheim went to a lot of trouble to give Swanson a L-O-N-G flashback while the wedding ceremony was being read which included the Prince's admonition to Kelly not to "forget him", "forsake him", or words to that effect. Yet she says yes anyway. You have to make a lot of assumptions about Kelly's character and personality to justify her decision, and rationalize in your own mind why on earth she didn't manifest some gumption and say after due consternation and anguish, "No, No, Never!".

This is a technically beautiful film. The lighting, sets, costumes, etc. are wonderful! Well worth seeing, even with the missing film and downbeat ending.