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vocalistbob
Reviews
Claudia (1943)
Awkward and forced...
I'm not sure why I was disappointed with this film. Maybe because it was too stage-y or maybe it was Dorothy McGuire's performance or maybe it was because, when you get right down to it, the 3 basic themes of the film have all been handled better in other films. To me, the script seemed contrived.
Robert Young's performance is the opposite of Dorothy McGuire's - she is unconvincing and overacts at every opportunity (and there were lots of opportunities), while he gave a nice, nuanced performance filled with genuine emotion. I found Ms. McGuire's character and performance annoying to the nth degree. Had this film not gotten good reviews, I never would have watched it all the way through. The best scenes were when Ina Claire and Robert Young were interacting.
Maybe it's a chick film and that's why I didn't find myself enjoying it as much as I anticipated.
It's a Great Life (1954)
Stick with your childhood memories
One of the cable stations ran this series a few years ago. Like so many comedies from the 50's, it was genuinely awful - the plots, stories and jokes just weren't funny - and the actors weren't either. There was no chemistry between them. This was the era when Newton Minnow called TV "a vast wasteland" and he was so right.
Over the years, cable brought back a number of comedy shows that I loved as a kid - Gale Storm, I married Joan, Our Miss Brooks, etc. - and they were all really awful. The same was true for most of the westerns and cop shows. Recently, one station has been running Highway Patrol" with Broderick Crawford. Just awful. It must have killed a talented guy who won a best actor Oscar to do that sort of drivel.
I guess it makes me appreciate the shows that were well done all the more - The Honeymooners, The Rifleman (some episodes, anyway), Maverick, Perry Mason, The Untouchables, Naked City, etc. The quality of most of those were "hit and miss", but at least they had some style and charm.
The Big Knife (1955)
I give up...
I've tried to watch this film 3 or 4 times, but I just can't get past the fact that everything about it is just awful. I'm sure it was a courageous move by somebody to cast Jack Palance as the protagonist, but there is not one single fiber of my being that believes that he could act at all, much less act against type.
Yes, I understand that Clifford Odets was a brilliant author, but it's not evident here. This odd and forced mish-mash of 50's hipster dialog seems to obfuscate any genuine meaning, which explains why none of the actors, even the good ones (Steiger, Ida Lupino, Shelly Winters, Everett Sloane) seems to know how to deliver their lines - it's as though they don't understand the meaning of what they are saying. And in the meantime, Wendell Corey and Palance stage a terrific contest to see who can be more stone-faced.
The direction is amateurish and completely overwrought. The physical interaction between the characters is as stilted as the dialog.
And can we discuss that hideous set? It's so busy, ugly and contrived that it adds to the robotic, disconnected quality of the characters, the dialog and the portrayals.
This film seems to suck the energy right out of me. It looks like everybody took an overdose of Valium each morning when they arrived on the set. It takes a pretty lousy movie to make Rod Steiger and Shelly Winters look bad, but this one succeeds.
I can see that it might have been effective as a play on or off Broadway, where intellectuals and beats could have congratulated themselves for appreciating the power of the plot and the artsy flourishes of the pseudo-hip dialog.
My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)
Without a "Hitch"
This is one of those films that it seems Alfred Hitchcock should have directed; The Gazebo is another that comes to mind. Similar to "The Wrong Man" (which was a true story), the odds seem so heavily stacked against our heroine that it seems she will never be able to save herself. Another comparison that comes to mind is "Gaslight".
Dame May Witty never gave a bad performance in her life, but here, she seems to sleepwalk through a role that doesn't give her much to work with. Her motivations are never fully revealed beyond the convenient fact that she loves her son.
George McCready just has to walk in front of the camera to give me a chill. This "over the top" role may have looked silly had any other actor tried to tackle it.
And finally, there's Nina Foch. I have always enjoyed watching her, but never thought she was a terrific actress. I WANTED her to be terrific, because she has a naturally exotic and sensual face and overall appearance, but she never seemed to submerge herself in a role - she always seemed a bit distant and aloof. It's interesting to me that she spent decades as an acting teacher/coach. As the saying goes, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach".
Hollywoodland (2006)
Ridiculous, just ridiculous...
I used to subscribe to a periodical that "Jungle Jim" published a number of years ago. I respect him and I share his life-long fascination with George Reeves and the mystery of his death. I know the facts as set forth in this film were as accurate as possible. Every interior shot of the Benedict Canyon home felt authentic and, from what I have been able to gather, Ben Affleck captured Reeves's somewhat bawdy, party-animal persona very well. He also does a surprisingly good interpretation of Reeve's physical mannerisms, facial expressions and speech patterns.
BUT...this film was a botched bit of nonsense. It seems to me that someone decided to write a story about one of Hollywood's many unsolved mysteries, but didn't really have enough information to flesh out a full-length feature film. The fabrication of Adrian Brody's detective is not a new concept - and it could have worked here - except that the "Sinclair" sidebar story was of no relevance to the story. It served only to fill time with a not-very-original or clever story and add a bit of gratuitous titillation.
Obviously, this was not intended to be a documentary, so i understand the omission of the opinions of Jack Larson (Jimmy Olson), Noel Neill (Lois #2) and Phyllis Coates (Lois #1) who all believed that this was a suicide and nothing else.
Bob Hoskins has never been less than superb in any role he's undertaken, and Eddie Mannix is no exception. The early film moguls were rough & tumble characters (Louis B. Mayer was originally a scrap dealer) whose business ethics were essentially non-existent. Eddie Mannix was certainly just another rich thug, and that's how Hoskins played him.
I am sure that dozens of attempts were made in the past to tell this story. Sometimes a screenplay just can't do justice to the story on which it was based - and this is one of them.
The Sadist (1963)
Charlie Starkweather & Tommy Udo
Film buffs will recognize Arch Hall, Jr.'s character as an excellent imitation/re-creation of Richard Widmark's Tommy Udo in "Kiss of Death", including his voice, his sadistic giggle and the habit of calling his enemies "Big Man".
The young couple are, of course, based on Charlie Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Fugate who roamed Nebraska & Wyoming in the late 50's on a thrill-killing spree that claimed 11 victims.
The film was much better than I expected it to be. There were a couple of twists I wasn't prepared for. Ultimately, the ending is dragged out for no apparent reason.
I have seen 2 other Arch Hall flicks and both were astonishingly bad. I have to assume that Arch Hall, Sr. was the best salesman this side of Ed Wood, because I can't imagine how he convinced anyone to put up more than a dime to finance those films.