The Film Junkie

I was hoping everyone was wrong.  I hoped that the ending would not be as predictable as they said.  I was let down.

It is the story of Charles (Clive Owen) and Lucinda (Jennifer Aniston) who meet on a train and begin an affair when their lives are spun out of control due to a robber and rapist who comes into their lives.

I saw it coming.  I don’t know what else to say.  Owen is a fantastic actor, but the material was beneath him.  Aniston’s part was limited and thus dull.  Vincent Cassel is creepy and devlish and I love him as LaRoche, the bad guy. 

The ending of the film was silly and unnecessary considering that the predictable real ending had already happened.  I felt let down by the script and the actors were too good for the material.

Grade: C

This miniseries chronicles the life of Queen Elizabeth I (Helen Mirren) through her two great loves and the wars that fell between.  Mirren is brilliant as the queen and her work is a perfect evolution of the character Cate Blanchett developed in the film ‘Elizabeth’ (1998).  Mirren has all the power and stature of the queen with the humanity and flaws of the woman we can never really know. 

Jeremy Irons co-stars as the Earl of Leicester, her one great love.  Irons is sexy in a way he has never been before, in my opinion, as a powerful and intelligent man who is genuinely in love with the great queen.  When Leicester dies, he advises his step-son, the Earl of Essex (Hugh Dancy), to take care of the queen.

The second half of the film focuses on the queen’s relationship with Essex.  He is a young and foolhardy man whose life comes strangely close to Leicester.  However this young man is not intelligent or modest in the ways Leicester was and it seems that the queen is using him for her own vanity rather than because she is actually in love with him.

It is an interesting way to examine the life of this extraordinary woman, however this film seems for interested in dispelling the idea of ‘The Virgin Queen’ than actually looking at what kind of leader she was.  I wish the filmmakers had spent more time looking beyond the bedroom, because that is the queen I am curious about.

Mirren and the boys do a great job, but this film seems to demean the idea of a female ruler in its insistence on seeing her relationships as selfish and petty, especially that with Essex.

Grade: B+

I love Marlon Brando, I really do, but he takes weird to a whole new level in his role as Robert E. Lee Clayton, a Scottish/Native American “regulator” sent to ‘deal’ with the problem of horse thieves.  Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, Harry Dean Stanton, Frederic Forrest and their cronies are the horse thieves who are working on a way to steal the horses of the RCMP when Clayton comes to town.

Nicholson takes up with the daughter (Kathleen Lloyd) of the man who hired Clayton which inspires even more wrath and also distances him from his friends.  One by one they are knocked off by the sadistic and severly odd Clayton.

It is a strange thing to see actors like Nicholson and Brando performing with one another.  Brando is such an unpredictable force while Nicholson is the epitome of masculine energy.  It works well, however, because the horse thieves are so clearly freaked out by Clayton which just inspires him to become even stranger.  The scene in the bathtub is probably the best between those two, Nicholson with his passion and anger and Brando with his bubbles.

This is not an easy film to watch, but is pays off in the great performances.  Brando, for better or worse, redefines himself yet again in this bizarre undertaking and you can’t take your eyes off of him.

Grade: B+

This movie is just not scary by our modern standards.  We see wayyyyy too much of the bad guy and the ending is horribly predictable.  However, sometimes the ride itself is fun enough.

The story follows an eccentric wax sculptor who apparently dies in a fire, but then re-emerges more talented than ever just when some corpses begin turning up and then getting lifted from the local morgue. 

Vincent Price is so camp as the sculptor that I wanted to stick a tent pole in him.  He is fun to watch and he rocks his odd but interesting role.

This was intended as a 3D movie and it is hilarious watching them try to scare you with the technology.  It reminded me of the SCTV sketch and ultimately made that sketch seem all the more spot on.

The best part of the film is certainly the final reveal, and there is no way I will ruin it by giving it away.  I watched it again in slow motion and it is truly an achievement in prosthetics.

Good for a laugh, by no means scary, but a good time and still better than the remake.

Grade: C+

So many documentaries these days focus on the irreparable damage we are doing to our world, and force us to look at the dark side of humanity.  Thus it is a refreshing change to see this great documentary about real New York public school students competing in the city’s ballroom championships.

We are intoduced to students from various burroughs, ethnicities and economic classes to get a wider perspective on what these ballroom dancing classes are doing for their self-esteem as well as how it keeps them out of the streets and improving their communication with their parents.  We see girls talking about boys and vice versa to realize that all these children are just on the verge of romance and thus are able to dance together with minimal embarrasment. 

What I was missing from this film was a look at more of the teams, I know that it would have been impossible to see all those students from all those schools, however because we only have one team that we are cheering for the outcome is almost too obvious. 

But all in all, this is heartwarming and sweet film that made me cry despite myself.

Grade: B+

So much of this film is well intentioned, but the plot is so loosely strung together that it is hard to make sense of.

We begin with a man (Humphrey Bogart) escaping from San Quentin prison.  Apparently he was found guilty for murdering his wife, though he pleads innocent.  From that moment on we see the world from his perspective and we only see his face when it is shown on the cover on the newspaper. 

He is helped along by a strange woman (Lauren Bacall) who has sympathy for his case due to her dead father’s similar case. 

Agnes Moorhead has a supporting role as a friend of Bogart’s dead wife who helped put him in the slammer.  She owns every scene she is in and my best memories of the film are of her majestic presence.

Of course, Bogart undergoes plastic surgery to change his face to his famous mug and elude the cops.  However it never seems to help and everyone in San Fran seems to know who he is.

The frustrating parts about this film come down to how Bacall fits in with just about everyone Bogart knew before he got locked up.  I was waiting for her to be revealed as a bad guy, but it never happened and that left me disappointed.

The love story didn’t fit with the rest of the film, however it is saved by a tremendous performance by Moorhead and great cinematic style.

Grade: B+

I love my country, but we are not especially known for making good popular cinema.  Sure we have our art house directors and our horror master, but we have never been able to break into the mainstream cinema of our neighbours to the South.  Until now.

This film is everything I have always wanted from the movies that have tried to be crowd-pleasers before (see ‘Men With Brooms’, ‘Timeline’), it mocks our culture while also embracing it.  After all, we Canadians are known for our sense of humour.

The story follows one Ontario cop (Colm Feore) and one Quebec cop (Patrick Huard) brought together by a murder on the border between the two provinces.  Their superiors force them to be partners and hilarity ensures, right?  Sure, it all sounds like it has been done before, but this film is uniquely Canadian/Canadien because both partners are bilingual and thus they spend equal amounts of time speaking in English and French.  Also, the killer is murdering those members of the hockey community who had a hand in selling a major team to the US.

For once the budget works to make this a real action movie full of convincing explosions and great car chase scenes.  I am by no means an action fan, but this works so well because neither of the men is trying to be overly macho and when Huard’s cop does act full of bravado, he is taken down a peg.  Feore is a true Canadian treasure, he is all class and elegance, but he can also get down and dirty.  After all, this is the guy who played Trudeau and I buy him as a cop itching for a desk job.

Of course each man learns from the other, there is a great sex scene intercut with a fight scene, and the ending has a great classic line.  Perhaps the fact that both men are divorced and end up being interested in the main woman in the other man’s life is a little too perfect, and the fact that they both have children as single dads, but the beauty of this flick is that it is not trying to be realistic, just like every American buddy cop flick.

My main problem with the film is the villain, the Tattoo Killer (Patrice Belanger).  Belanger is simply not the same caliber actor as Feore and Huard and thus in their scenes together he seems as though he is acting in a bad student film.  I wish they had gone another way in the casting of this role, but it is a small issue in the grand scheme of things.

A knock down, drag out smash of a film.  No wonder it won so many Genies.

Grade: A-

Last weekend I had my first bridesmaid experience as one of my closest friends got hitched and this film rang true to the chaos, madness, mistakes and good intentions that come with planning and executing a wedding.

This was #83 on the AFI’s 100 Funniest Movies of all time not because it is remarkably funny, dramatic or moving, but because it is all three at once without being corny.  Spencer Tracy plays the befuddled title character with more heart and less cheese than Steve Martin in the lamer remake.  Elizabeth Taylor plays the bride who only wanted a simple wedding but is pushed into a large extravagent wedding by her mother (Joan Bennett) who regrets her own small wedding.

The film is beautifully shot and directed by Vincente Minnelli.  The man was able to bring you into a location like few others and he makes you feel every inconvienient moment and sadness with his brilliant staging.  Thus not only are we swept up in the hilarious frustration of Tracy’s experiences, we are also drawn in by the lush visuals.

A funny and sweet film that still rings very true.  Skip the remake and see this, the original.

Grade: A-

Sometimes musicals take themselves too seriously and then there are musicals like this that have a wink and a nudge behind every ballad, ballet and bawdy joke.  Fred Astaire stars as a washed up Hollywood actor trying to regain his dignity by doing a Broadway show.  The show tries to become a musical version of Faust that crashes and burns but it taken over by Astaire and transformed to the relief of all. 

Astaire knows well enough that ‘Tony Hunter’ may as well be himself and he plays it with great modesty and is hilarious.  He is teamed with an up and coming ballet dancer (Cyd Charisse) who he knows is too tall for him to dance with, but is forced to make the best of it.  The staging throughout the film of Charisse upstage of Astaire, or slightly bending, or wearing flats is fairly obvious and works toward the joke of the famously short Astaire with the famously leggy Charisse. 

I have never been much of a fan of Charisse’s acting, she is an amazing dancer and is able to tell a story with her movement, but when it comes to acting she always falls flat.  It is a treat to see her teamed with such a classy gent as Astaire, when she was usually paired with the more masculinly sexual Gene Kelly, and I think I like her better with Astaire.  Their work in the Jazz Murder Mystery piece is as good and innovative as anything she did with Kelly.  Her acting is the one weak spot in the film, but her dancing almost makes up for it.

As sidekicks we have the old pros Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant as the married songwriters who help make the monstrous production ‘The Band Wagon’.  Fabray is a favorite of mine from ‘Your Show Of Shows’ and it is a treat to see her let loose in a musical.  Her ‘Triplets’ number with Astaire and Jack Buchanan is probably the second best musical number in the show behind ‘That’s Entertainment’.  Levant is not given too much of a chance to show off his musical chops, but he has fun on the ride.

This is one of the last great old Hollywood musicals, and Vincente Minnelli’s visuals are spectacular once again.  Betty Comden’s songs highlight the sheer joy of this film and helped to create one classic in ‘That’s Entertainment’.  I don’t know how this isn’t a more famous flick, it is certainly one of the best musicals of the old system.

Grade: A-

This is a sorta feminist film about a female athlete trying to assert her independence despite the wishes of her fiance.  Katharine Hepburn is delightful, but somewhat depressingly weak-willed, in her role as Pat.  Pat is skilled in various sports and is used by Mike (Spencer Tracy) until he begins to see that he can make more money from her as a legitimate athlete than by fixing her matches.

There is chemistry between the two, however this is well into their coupling and the freshness they once had is no longer there.  Tracy is dull and boring, I have never understood his appeal, and Hepburn is semi-feminist, but also falls under the wayside of her passions toward both men.

Grade: B+