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Mythical Monkey
Reviews
Duel in the Sun (1946)
overly-long Western soap opera
David O. Selznick fails to recapture the epic grandeur of "Gone with the Wind" in this Western soap opera about a half-Indian girl who comes between two brothers. It's interesting to see Gregory Peck as a bad boy and the sight of the bare-shouldered, bare-legged Jennifer Jones wrapped in a blanket is almost worth the price of admission, but the movie is 40 minutes too long and the interminable final scene, with a melodramatic score by Dimitri Tiomkin, unintentionally borders on pure camp. Maybe worth catching on cable, but not something you'll want to see twice. 4 out of 10.
Boys' Night Out (1962)
Dated, even for 1962
Given that "The Apartment" had been released two years before and covered the same ground more realistically (not to mention more humorously and movingly), "Boys' Night Out" must have seemed dated even in 1962. "Boys' Night Out" is basically a knockoff of the Academy Award-winning Apartment for the Rock-Hudson-and-Doris-Day/adults-don't-have-sex crowd, with James Garner and Kim Novak in the lead roles. Even taken on its own terms, ignoring its historical context, the movie is dumb and predictable, with no funny lines and plenty of bad acting (even from the great James Garner who is usually entertaining in anything). Skip this one and instead try something like The Apartment, Indiscreet or Man's Favorite Sport. 4 out of 10.
Lenny (1974)
strangely unfunny biography of a very funny stand-up comic
An interesting biopic of groundbreaking comic Lenny Bruce with Dustin Hoffman as Lenny and Valerie Perrine as his stripper wife. The movie suffers from one problem: Dustin Hoffman isn't funny. Eddie Izzard playing the same role on stage in London was so funny doing old Lenny Bruce material, I was crying. For that matter, Lenny Bruce himself was hilarious as I discovered in the 2-cd set of his 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall. Although Hoffman does what seems to be a spot-on imitation of Bruce, he never finds the essential relationship with the stand-up material. Without the laughs, the movie fails its goal of showing why Lenny Bruce was such an important figure in American culture. Still, Valerie Perrine has never been more naked. 5 out of 10.
Seven Days in May (1964)
fizzles a bit down the stretch, but definitely worth a look
SEVEN DAYS IN MAY is a pretty decent thriller with Burt Lancaster as (**POSSIBLE SPOILER**) a right-wing general who plots the overthrow of the U.S. government. Kirk Douglas, as a colonel who stumbles across the plot, and Ava Gardner, as a drunk sexpot (talk about your typecasting!), give especially strong performances. The movie fizzles somewhat down the stretch (**DEFINITE SPOILER!!**) as the President (Fredric March) thwarts the coup by quoting the Constitution at Lancaster. The great Rod Serling wrote the screenplay and should have known better than to switch the focus of the story away from Kirk Douglas who is left standing on the sidelines when Storytelling 101 suggests he's the guy who must make the key contribution to the movie's resolution. Still, another taut thriller from John Frankenheimer and definitely worth a look. 7 out of 10.
Traffic (2000)
Simplistic message, interesting direction
As a serious examination of the drug trade, I thought TRAFFIC was laughably simplistic, but as a Douglas Sirk-like lampoon of Hollywood's typical approaches to complex social issues, TRAFFIC was very interesting. Director Steven Soderbergh uses and subverts three distinct cinematic approaches to his three story lines -- the sepia-toned documentary (with the excellent Benicio del Toro); the self-congratulatory made-for-TV Movie of the Week soaper (the drug czar and his daughter story line), blue-tinted to look like the picture from an old black-and-white portable television; and the glossy, high-budget action flick (the Catherine Zeta-Jones bit), cynical and empty, but filled with explosions, blood and bullets. Maybe others who have also been well acquainted with drug users and their widely different motivations and troubles think more of the movie's insights than I do. Personally, I suspect in twenty years the message in TRAFFIC will seem as dated as those earnest Stanley Kramer movies from the late 50s/early 60s. But we may still enjoy the artistry of a director who serves up his kitsch with style and energy. 7 out of 10.