AMADEUS
(2 hrs & 38 min, color, 1984)
Peter Shaffer’s award-winning play pertaining to the
tense encounter of the young Mozart (Tom Hulce) with much-older Italian court
composer Antonio Salieri (a flawless F. Murray Abraham) is translated to the
screen by Milos Forman, and he makes it worlds more than a two-hour plus
aria. In his hands it becomes an absurd,
bleakly humorous, electrifying, explosive, thrilling and amazing story, in
which Mozart’s death is orchestrated by the envious Salieri. Largely fiction, the film is a morality play
in which that sin of envy pays its drastic wages! A stupendous production!
AMAZING
GRACE (1 hr & 58 min, color, 2007)
William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd), a member of the
English Parliament, hammered away at the minds of his political fellows for a
quarter of a century before he finally succeeded in 1807 at putting a legal end
to the slave trade. He was inspired by
John Newton (Albert Finney), a converted slave trader, composer of the famous
hymn “Amazing Grace.” For two
heart-stirring hours we share Wilberforce’s passion and pain, his gains and
losses, his spent youth and his spent health, en route to the noble
objective. A much-neglected footnote of
history!
BEATIFUL
MIND, A (2 hrs &14 min, color, 2001)
The struggle of Nobel Prize winning scientist John
Nash (Russell Crowe) with paranoid schizophrenia starting at age thirty is a brilliantly
acted out drama. Under Ron Howard’s
astute direction it celebrates the loving care of wife Alicia (Jennifer
Connelly) and others, love that had to fight its way through many monstrous
barriers to make the comeback he has experienced happen. The frightening
and bizarre dynamics of the disease during Nash’s darkest periods of delusion
are portrayed in movie terms with great imagination. A beauty of a story from every angle!
BECKET
(2 hrs & 28 min, color, 1964)
In 12th century England,
scholar/statesman/prelate Thomas Becket (Richard Burton) enters into a
life-or-death warfare with King Henry II (Peter O’Toole) over church/state
priorities and ends up a martyred archbishop.
The two men, carousing friends while Becket is Chancellor, are abruptly
estranged after the King appoints him Archbishop of Canterbury. Both actors are stupendous in their
performances. And the lucid script by
Edward Anhalt, based on the Jean Anouilh play, gives the medieval drama
strength and lasting quality, despite certain inaccuracies.
BOUNTY,
THE (2 hrs & 10 min, color, 1984)
What really happened in 1789 aboard that legendary
British vessel? Director Roger Donaldson
and his writers give us the best of the four movie versions. It is an immense tale of blind ambition,
obsession and human failing, based upon research by a historian named Richard
Hough. Anthony Hopkins fills the role of
Captain Bligh (not exactly the villain) and a young Mel Gibson portrays
Fletcher Christian (not exactly the hero).
There is good and evil, sanity and insanity on everyone’s part, the
outcome a strange mixture of tragedy and triumph in odd proportion to each
other.
BOYHOOD
(2 hrs & 45 min, color, 2014)
The chronicle of Mason (Ellar
Coltrane), an American boy with one sister, a divorced mother (Patricia
Arquette) and a somewhat loving though stumbling absentee father (Ethan Hawke),
is traced from elementary school to college entrance, the film having been shot
over twelve years with the same cast.
What a gamble, and it pays off! “Life’s
little moments!” That is what writer/director
Richard Linklater calls the focus of his attention in this modest gem. The boy faces the “voluptuous panic” of
choosing the road to his future, and it is all done seamlessly and with
uncompromising realism.
BRIDGE
ON THE RIVER KWAI, THE (2 hrs & 41 min, color, 1957)
Director David Lean took war pictures into a new
dimension adapting Pierre Boulle’s novel, about the building of a bridge of
strategic importance to Japan by the use of Allied POWs during World War
II. Two British officers (Alec Guinness
and Jack Hawkins), an American combatant (William Holden) and a Japanese
colonel (Sessua Hayakawa) are the bedeviled souls that destiny brings together
in this complex and brilliant masterwork.
Private wars within the War prove crucial in exploring the boundaries
between human prerogative and military imperative.
BROADCAST
NEWS (2 hrs & 11 min, color, 1987)
Director/Writer James L. Brooks gives us a crazy
satire about the world of television journalism. The script is consistently razor sharp. Holly Hunter is the superb center of attention
as a workaholic, perfectionist production executive with a bit of a short fuse
and a volatile personality. Her
co-leads, playing two of her character’s subordinates with whom she enjoys
brief romantic dalliances, are William Hurt and Albert Brooks, each with
remarkable talent and adorable limitations.
The interplay of these three produces nothing less than pure magic.
CABARET
(2 hrs & 2 min, color, 1972)
The festering life of Berlin, Germany just before
the Nazis came to power is the setting for the famous stage musical,
superlatively adapted for the screen by Bob Fosse. Liza Minelli goes over the top as Sally
Bowles, an amoral performer in a sleazy café.
Joel Grey is the devilish master of ceremonies, and Michael York is the
young Englishman who gets involved with their antics. Fine acting, brilliant juxtapositions of
image, stupendous choreography, and electrifying music combine to give us a
forceful evocation of the enemy around and within. Is there, after all, a difference?
CASABLANCA
(1 hr & 43 min, b&w, 1942)
The universally embraced classic has transcended its
time. It now belongs to the ages! Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul
Henreid, parties to a love triangle, are brought together in the famed Moroccan
city, which has been rendered a refugee center for anti-fascists during World
War II. But the socio-political crisis
and the romantic crisis are all of a piece.
We have an account of people who are forced to live on the precipitous
edge of destiny and make life-and-death decisions that transcend private problems
of the heart. We can thank the versatile
skills of Director Michael Curtiz.
CHARADE
(1 hr & 54 min, color, 1963)
In my opinion the greatest of the romantic
thrillers! Audrey Hepburn searches, with
mysterious Cary Grant’s assistance, for a fortune her late husband has stashed
away somewhere in France, with others in hot pursuit of the loot as well, James
Coburn, Walter Matthau and George Kennedy among them. Director Stanley Donen gives it just the
right dollop of suave comedy, Hitchcockian intrigue and smiling affection to
mix with a fine-tuned script, gorgeous music by Henry Mancini, and delicious
atmosphere. How perfect can the
chemistry be among a movie’s many elements!
CHINATOWN
(2 hrs & 11 min, color, 1974)
A gutsy thriller from the hand of Director Roman
Polanski! Detective Jack Nicholson’s
work on a domestic spying case leads him inadvertently into a cesspool of
political scandal and corruption in 1930s Los Angeles. Involved in the shadowy doings are mystery
woman Faye Dunaway and a business tycoon John Huston. Robert Towne’s screenplay takes us through a
nightmare with a shattering climax, which almost defines bald evil itself. Film
noir was given a new face and new stylistic form that has had a profound
influence on the work of others in this genre ever since.
CITIZEN
KANE (1 hr & 59 min, b&w, 1941)
Charles Foster Kane is a flamboyant,
egomaniacal, headstrong (and quite fictional) newspaper tycoon who shakes up
the world – socially, politically, economically, financially, and theatrically
over the space of a lifetime. An
unforgettable Orson Welles plays him, also directing and co-authoring the
much-written-about screenplay. Volumes
have been composed about the awesome visuals invented for this masterpiece,
ones that have had colossal influence on the way films have since been
made. A singular work of art from its
somber opening to its stirring last frame!
CITY
LIGHTS (1 hr & 22 min, b&w, 1931)
Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp gambles upon the
precarious friendship of a high society sot and the affections of a young blind
woman selling flowers, taking from the former to finance healing surgery for
the latter. At times the movie (silent
with a musical soundtrack) is raucously funny, at others serene and gentle, at
still others painful in its reminder of human cruelty and folly. After some alienation and deprivation of
dignity, the Tramp is not without his reward.
His final encounter with the blind woman he saves, as she sees him for
the first time, is beyond words.
CONSPIRACY
OF HEARTS (1 hr & 50 min, b&w, 1960)
During World War II, a convent becomes a secret
refuge for Jewish girl children sought by the Nazis. The endangerment visited upon the mother
superior (Lilli Palmer), as she performs her ministrations of mercy right under
the nose of the Fascists and in affiliation with the partisan underground,
provides the basis for a gripping, heart-in-the-throat drama and a parable of
mercy that will consume one’s soul and spirit.
The British film has been out of circulation for many years and I regret
that I do not have the director’s name.
I never cease to pray and hope for its re-release.
[To be continued tomorrow]
To
read other entries in my blog, please consult its website: enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the
blog entry for August 9, 2013.
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