NORTH
BY NORTHWEST (2 hrs & 16 min, color, 1959)
Alfred Hitchcock at his very best! An innocent businessman (a sterling Cary
Grant) becomes the victim of a case of mistaken identity and an endangered pawn
in cold war espionage activity. In his
life as a fugitive he must tangle with the allurement of mystery woman Eva
Marie Saint and the deadly machinations of master enemy spy James Mason. Not an awkward moment occurs, from the film’s
bustling start to its heart-in-the-throat finish. It turns out to be a cliffhanger, literally
as well as figuratively. See for
yourself, and have the breathless time of your life!
ON
THE WATERFRONT (1 hr & 48 min, b&w, 1954)
Director Elia Kazan’s finest work, championing the
rights of longshoremen to escape criminal management! Marlon Brando gives his best performance as
longshoreman Terry Malloy, flunky for a big muscle boss (Lee J. Cobb). Under the influence of a murdered worker’s
sister (Eva Marie Saint) and a radicalized priest (Karl Malden) Terry slowly
awakens to the evil to which he has become an accessory and, at the risk of his
life, tries to blow the lid off waterfront corruption. The film slugs hard but is well balanced,
controlled and superbly scripted by the brilliant Budd Schulberg.
PARENTHOOD
(2 hrs & 4 min, color, 1989)
Family life is savored, satirized and celebrated in
director Ron Howard’s great comedy/drama.
A busy professional man must spend more time with an emotionally
volatile child; a single mother does battle with two raucous teens; a
perfectionist father is in danger of losing his neglected wife; a senior
citizen becomes entangled with a prodigal adult son. These original plot lines are uniformly
entertaining, endearing, well scripted and significant. Steve Martin and Diane Weist are two of a
fine cast of adults, all doing choice work.
When it is over, one is likely to pant for more.
PATHS
OF GLORY (1 hr & 26 min, b&w, 1957)
Stanley Kubrick gives us a wrenching drama of
military injustice set during World War I.
Three French soldiers face prosecution for cowardice in the face of the enemy
(punishable by a firing squad) on behalf of an entire company so accused. Kirk Douglas is the company commander, who
steps out of his place in rank to come to the trio’s courtroom defense in an
apparently losing battle for sanity and for their lives. The title is meant
sardonically; nothing happens to cheer about in this anti-war tale, from a
novel by Humphrey Cobb. In fact, few
movie indictments of the war apparatus have ever burned hotter or more
unforgettably.
PLATOON
(2 hrs exactly, color, 1986)
Oliver Stone, director and writer, has given us the
definitive dramatization of life in the infantry during the Vietnam War. But he transcends the politics of an era with
the vision of fighting men stripped to the nub of their base natures, without
the restraints or supports of a civilized society – at war with the enemy, each
other and themselves. The brooding
narration of a once gung ho volunteer, whose journal of disillusioning events
provides both the structural framework and the poetic richness of the drama,
draws us by inexorable degrees into a living hell and beyond. Top grade!
RAGING
BULL (2 hrs & 9 min, b&w, 1980)
The notorious middleweight contender of the 1940s,
Jake La Motta, pinned this nickname on himself and proceeded to do all he could
to live up to it – out of the ring as well as in. Robert De Niro is a titanic force playing him
in Martin Scorcese’s totally authentic drama.
La Motta’s brother and trainer (Joe Pesci) and his quiet-natured wife
(Cathy Moriarty) get the worst end of his brashly suspicious, uncouth and
violent nature before abandoning all efforts to help him. He is allowed to invade our viscera and
challenge all our standards of civility.
A brilliant and courageous character study!
RAGTIME (2 hrs & 35 min, color, 1981)
E. L. Doctorow’s best seller is brilliantly adapted
by master Director Milos Forman – a stylish tableau of life in the U.S. during
the first two decades of the 20th century. Five interlocking stories involve a wealthy
New Rochelle family whose insulation is destroyed, when contradictions about
class, race, personal responsibility, and public morality are brought to their
doorstep. A great and sizeable cast
includes Mary Steenbergen, Brad Dourif, Howard Rollins, Elizabeth McGovern,
James Olsen, Mandy Patimkin, and James Cagney making his last movie appearance.
REAR
WINDOW (1 hr & 52 min, color, 1954)
Alfred Hitchcock locks the viewer into the
consciousness and the spatial confinement of a temporarily crippled magazine
photographer (James Stewart) bound to his wheelchair in his small apartment,
telescoping his neighbors’ activities with his roving eye and his
binoculars. The viewer sees only what he
sees, which includes, after a spell, fragmented evidence that a murder may have
been committed. Grace Kelly, his
sweetheart, and Thelma Ritter, his home nurse, come to share his
curiosity. The camera sucks us into the
terror of the encompassing nightmare that slowly takes shape.
RICHARD
III (2 hrs & 38 min, color, 1956)
Laurence Olivier’s checkered career in the capacity
of film director
and actor reached its peak here.
He does full justice to Shakespeare’s diabolical fiend, orchestrating
the conspiracy, deceit, lust, murder and betrayal by which the usurpation of
the English throne is accomplished, using the character’s crookedness of body
as a signature of prodigious self-loathing.
Great work is done with light and shadow and with trenchant close-ups
you could never effect on the stage. The
eye is brought fully into the spectrum of deadly deeds. This one would be hard to top.
ROOM
AT THE TOP (1 hr & 55 min, b&w, 1958)
Laurence Harvey excels as an ambitious young man
from England’s postwar lower classes in an ultimately shattering tale of
self-entrapment. Simone Signoret is
superb as the older married woman who reaches out to him from her own abused
affections, and Heather Sears is the sheltered and empty-headed “kipper” he
pursues – her father, Donald Wolfit, a wealthy industrialist whom Harvey both
loathes and envies. The screenplay, from
a John Braine novel, remains gritty and coarse and caustic and plausible all
the way, thanks to the great care Director Jack Clayton put into it.
RULING
CLASS, THE (2 hrs & 32 min, color, 1972)
A modern day heir to a peerage (Peter O’Toole
outdoing himself) threatens to scandalize his family because of his belief that
he is nothing less than the God of Love incarnate. An intricate, irreverent, absurdist social
satire, under Peter Medak’s superb direction, derives from this premise, with
loads of laughs, musical numbers, frolicsome escapades, and ghastly situations
that arise when the heir’s relations call upon psychiatric science to take him
in hand. O’Toole’s fans will have a
feast with this one, and then some. A
terrific supporting cast give equally three-dimensional portrayals.
SCHINDLER’S
LIST (3 hrs & 15 min, b&w, 1993)
Steven Spielberg takes a firm, no-nonsense and
vastly imaginative hand to the adaptation of Thomas Keneally’s biographical
novel about Oscar Schindler, a real life German war profiteer who blew his
acquired fortune buying the safety of more than 1100 Jews during the
Holocaust. The screenplay is a titanic piece of writing by
Steven Zaillian that made leading men out of Liam Neeson in the title role and
Ralph Finnes as the vicious, sadistic commandant Goeth. And in low key but quite captivating is Ben
Kingsley as Schindler’s Jewish business partner.
SEARCHERS,
THE (1 hr & 59 min, color, 1956)
John Wayne is unusually electrifying as an
embittered, bigoted Confederate determined to find his niece, who has been
captured by Comanches, the search covering several years. Jeffrey Hunter is the half-breed whose
assistance he reluctantly accepts.
Strong characterizations throughout a sizeable cast, exciting
chemistries between those characters, skillful plotting, breathtaking visuals
and great action sequences add up to Director John Ford’s best western. But it has a rough, uncompromising edge to it
that presents a formidable challenge to present day sensibilities.
SELMA
(2 hrs & 8 min, color, 2014)
The 1965 mass march in Alabama that
catalyzed our nation into embracing equal voting rights for minorities is
dramatized with courage, strength of purpose and total devotion to the facts,
however disturbing, and the truth surrounding them. Director Ava DuVernay and Screenwriter Paul
Webb did not hesitate to portray the full intensity of the conflict prior to
it. The movie builds to a moment of rare
exaltation of spirit. David Oyelowo as
Martin L. King and Carmen Ejogo as Coretta deserve the highest marks for their
performances. This one should be
preserved in a time capsule.
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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