February’s Films
- Posted by Johanna on February 27, 2006 at 7:53 am
- Category: Movies/TV
The Thin Man — I’d forgotten how many mystery conventions this movie originated: the wisecracking, crime-solving lovers, the dinner party denouement, and so on. Sparkling great fun where the wit and the charm take precedence far over the actual mystery.
High Time — No, it’s not a drug film; it’s a Blake Edwards-directed piece of fluff about Bing Crosby going to college as a 50-year-old while demanding to be treated as just another freshman. You may recognize the plot from Rodney Dangerfield’s Back to School, but that didn’t have 60s teen idol Fabian and sex kitten Tuesday Weld. It also didn’t have Yvonne Craig (Batgirl) as the school reporter or Gavin MacLeod as a Poindexter-type professor, all big-framed glasses and bald head, even when relatively young.
College back then was apparently all about the traditions, whether stealing wood for the freshman bonfire (leading to sex-based sight gags and outhouse jokes) to avoiding being caught with a girl in the dorm. It’s a hoot seeing college guys attending sessions wearing ties while the girls wear long skirts and sweater sets (even as cheerleaders) and Bing has his everpresent pipe, even while ice skating. It’s impossible to describe the impressions of the lengthy scene where he’s dressed in Southern belle drag as a fraternity prank. The scene transitions are surreal, with anonymous figures painting over a freeze frame or rolling up the edges to reveal the next setting.
(The Original) King Kong — Crude, but still awe-inspiring in its effects. I can see why this film inspired generations of special effects artists. The stop-motion holds up better than more modern movies’ bluescreens, and Kong maintains his animal nature. Fay Wray is luminously beautiful, which I also didn’t expect; I had no idea her looks were so timeless.
Double Indemnity — Wow, that’s a switch for handsome dad Fred MacMurray, playing a sleazy, murderous insurance agent. (I’m glad to see that it’s well-recognized, according to the IMDB trivia page, that Barbara Stanwyck’s platinum wig was terrible. She’s more attractive as a brunette, I think.) It’s rather moralistic for a noir, ensuring that everyone gets what they deserve in the end, but gripping nonetheless. I stayed up later than I should just to see what finally happened. The whole thing seems kind of quaint, these days, given the brutal murders and complex plots we see every day in our fiction and on the news, but I can still recognize its power.
Mrs. Henderson Presents — Funny, thought-provoking, and unexpectedly powerful. Judi Dench well deserves an Oscar for this role as a British widow in the late 1930s/early 1940s who creates a nude cabaret show for soldiers. Bob Hoskins also surprised me with his range, playing the theater manager making more of himself than his birth would dictate. I was impressed that the women were selected for authentic body types; it was refreshing to see naked women presented as beautiful even without gym addiction, implants, or liposuction. Plus I learned that while female nudity can be artistic and inspiring, male nudity, especially past a certain age, is just laughable, but in a good way.
The General — Supposedly Buster Keaton’s best film. It’s not my favorite, because it’s more about the machinery than it is his performance, but it is astounding in so many ways. Keaton is a Southerner who rescues his train and his girl from the Union Army during the Civil War (while falling down a lot). For one thing, it’s unusual these days to see a Southern hero portrayed during that timeframe. It’s also amazing to consider that they were playing tag with real trains, not to mention the scene where they drop an entire locomotive through a burning bridge into a river. No miniatures here!
(Ignore the picture on the cover. It’s a terrible image that doesn’t even look like him. He was a much more handsome man than that.)
Just Like Heaven — The Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy where she is a ghost who doesn’t realize it. Pleasant enough, but very forgettable, and the best friends, Dina Waters (Greg the Bunny) and Donal Logue, did a better job than the leads, in my opinion.
Awakenings — I wasn’t planning on watching this, but I stumbled across it while switching channels, and it was immediately engrossing. The movie’s premise is simple — a group of catatonic patients are awakened through a dedicated doctor’s determination to use an experimental drug — but it’s also innately visual. There’s nothing like seeing someone who used to be effectively lifeless coming alive, especially in the unusual ways the patients did so. One would move only when she heard the jazz music of her childhood, for instance. Others could only move when touched by someone.
It’s a terrible fear, that of being trapped in an unresponsive body for decades, and the talented cast — including Robert De Niro, Anne Meara, and Alice Drummond (one of those you-know-her-when-you-see-her character actresses) — make real the patients’ lives, especially the part where they last remember themselves as years younger in another time. Robin Williams also does an excellent job as the doctor, one of his rare roles in which he doesn’t do “bits” and plays against type as a shy man devoted to science and learning from his patients.
Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit — Absolutely terrific, as expected. I was surprised to see so many references to other movies in scenes and shots. There’s King Kong and An American Werewolf in London, of course, but I noticed a lot more while watching.
