TOM
JONES (2 hrs & 9 min, color, 1963)
Tom (Albert Finney) is a mischievous bastard kid,
having been adopted as a baby by a merciful country squire. On the threshold of adulthood he is rendered
a vagabond by scandal and the conniving of enemies. Henry Fielding’s beloved farcical satire on
18th century class society in England is given delectable treatment
by Director Tony Richardson. It is
superbly bawdy – bounding in all kinds of bedlam, brash buffoonery and
naughtiness that Richardson never allows to get out of hand, a consistently
rousing and really good-hearted romp.
Have a ball with it!
TOOTSIE
(1 hr & 56 min, color, 1982)
A discontented actor (Dustin Hoffman), eager to
raise money for mounting more sophisticated theatre, disguises himself as a
woman and gets chosen for the female lead in a TV soap opera, hoping to cash in
with the salary s/he earns. Jessica
Lange plays an actress he falls for, she believing him to be a platonic female
friend. The scheme lands him in serious
hot water. The writing, thriving on the
loaded subject of sexual identity, is one for the books, the credit for it
shared by Don McGuire, Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal. This for me is Sidney Pollack’s best
directorial effort.
TOPSY-TURVY
(2 hrs & 40 min, color, 1999)
The languishing London-based partnership of showmen
Gilbert and Sullivan is saved from collapse (1885) with the premier of “The
Mikado”. Mike Leigh, writer/director,
has made that turning point come poignantly alive and has added much to our
appreciation for the birth pangs involved in the creative process. With amazing restraint and with lots of droll
but loving humor he not only enters the lives of these composers but the world
they inhabited as well. He makes every
character in a splendid ensemble production take on fascinating foible and
dimension. Superb in every way!
TOUCH
OF EVIL (1 hr & 51 min, b&w, 1958)
Orson Welles (also directing) portrays a resourceful
man of despoiled soul and conscience – a police chief in a small Mexican border
town, who resorts to the underhanded to solve a local murder. Mexican narcotics officer Charlton Heston and
Heston’s American wife Janet Leigh, traveling through on their honeymoon, are
pulled into the dirty affair. The script
is based upon a novel by Whit Masterson, and the haunted and decadent atmosphere
Welles creates to bring it alive on screen is astounding. The camera is no mere observer; it heightens
our perceptions at every turn.
TREASURE
OF THE SIERRA MADRE, THE (2 hrs & 6 min, b&w, 1948)
John Huston’s visionary masterpiece is about greed –
men on a fool’s errand for gold in the fabled Sierras. Humphrey Bogart in probably the most
out-of-the-ordinary role of his career and Walter Huston (John’s father) are
fantastic as high-spirited gold prospectors, with Tim Holt their more lightweight
companion. The story, based on a novel
by B. Traven, takes our threesome on a most fascinating mountain trek. I never tire of studying the dynamics of
their life together, the erosion of solidarity the closer to success their
tired feet take them. Tremendous and
gigantic! Great score too!
TRUMAN
SHOW, THE (1 hr & 43 min, color, 1998)
Truman Burbank is a thirty-year-old man whose entire
life on an idyllic island has been seen by a world-wide public in a 24/7
telecast, finessed by a genius TV producer named Cristof (Ed Harris). Gradually he discovers that he is living
inside a cocoon and has to fight his way out.
Jim Carrey gives a wonderful performance, and what could very easily
have been an over-the-top, heavy-handed gimmick becomes a quality work of
absurdist art in the hands of director Peter Weir. The camera is used with great imagination,
and the script is a great case in point for originality.
12
YEARS A SLAVE (2 hrs & 14 min, color,
2013)
The
scourge of black slavery in the U.S. has never been dramatized on screen with
more daring and forthrightness and more authenticity than in this piece of
pre-Civil War history. A free
Afro-American man, citizen of Saratoga, N.Y., was kidnapped and spent twelve
years in the south on a plantation where he lived out a nightmare that he
retold in an autobiography, adapted here by British film-maker Steve McQueen
and writer John Ridley. For further
extensive comment on the film from me I urge the reader to consult my website,
enspiritus.blogspot.com, for the May 2, 2014 posting.
2001:
A SPACE ODYSSEY (2 hrs & 24 min, color, 1968)
Stanley Kubrick’s landmark production takes us from
the grunts and gropings of prehistoric humans to a strange future encounter in
the bowels of intergalactic space, loosely derived from a writing by Arthur C.
Clarke. Astronauts headed for Jupiter
track the source of an energy emitted by an excavated monolith on the moon’s
surface. They play second fiddle to high
tech hardware, a berserk computer and a warp on the edge of infinity that
threatens to consume. A substantial
mythical journey of body, mind and spirit!
The last half hour is indescribable to anyone who has not seen it.
VERTIGO
(2 hrs & 8 min, color, 1958)
Alfred Hitchcock weaves a stunning and spellbinding
tale about a veteran cop (James Stewart) traumatized in the line of duty and so
afflicted with agoraphobia that he decides to retire. He soon gets sucked into a private
surveillance case involving a beautiful and mysterious woman (Kim Novak)
supposedly possessed by a departed spirit.
What really possesses her and why the hapless man becomes ever so
obsessed with her is the business of Hitch’s most psychologically devious
movie, driven by a creeping sense of terror and borderline sanity, with a
mind-blowing climax.
WEST
SIDE STORY (2 hrs & 31 min, color, 1961)
In his great innovative musical for the Broadway
stage Leonard Bernstein created a sound, a beat, a mystique that defies
imitation, and director Robert Wise brought the work to life on the
screen. The central plot: A native teen
weary of his delinquent past and a sheltered Puerto Rican girl are star-crossed
lovers caught between rival street gangs.
Jerome Robbins’s choreography on actual NYC streets is something to see
again and again. Every musical number is
without doubt a showstopper, an event – a bridge crossed to move the plot
along, not a detour or a mere dalliance.
WHALE
RIDER (1 hr & 41 min, color, 2002)
Considered by her rigid grandfather to be unsuited
for leadership or for instruction in the Maori disciplines because of her sex,
a twelve-year-old girl must wage a persistent battle for recognition. The price she pays to win the hearts of her
people cannot be measured in any modest terms, and she has a restorative effect
upon her family and tribe. The story is
from a novel by Witi Ihimaera, the film directed by Niki Caro. There has simply been nothing like it in
American movie theaters before. It will
bind many hearts to the sacred ground of being.
And yes, the whales do get into the act.
WHEN
HARRY MET SALLY (1 hr & 35 min, color, 1989)
A most unusual boy-meets-girl love story! Sally (Meg Ryan) and Harry (Billy Crystal)
are two unsettled young adults who require chance meetings, misunderstandings
and forced acquaintance over many years to find out that they are right for
each other. A flippantly and fabulously
funny team they are, forging the linkage between trusting friendship and
romantic love. They find out that there
is nothing wrong after all with marrying your best friend. How perfect can the chemistry be between two
lead players! The comedy they generate
is an absolute stunner.
WHO’S
AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (2 hrs & 9 min, b&w, 1966)
Under the sway of Mike Nichols’ coherent and
resourceful direction Edward Albee’s brilliant college campus saga of George
and Martha, the seemingly placid professor and his super bitch wife, ignites,
with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor at their memorable best. George Segal and Sandy Dennis are a young
couple visiting. The script has strong
allegorical significance, both timely and timeless implications, and is
concerned with the decimation of massive idols of the mind. Love, hate, fear, jealousy, cruelty,
desperation, grand illusion and sobering discovery all figure in it.
THE
WIZARD OF OZ (1 hr & 42 min, color, 1939)
The unhappy Kansas farm girl named Dorothy (Judy
Garland, who else?) dreams a delirious dream, one that seems to transport her
into that world “over the rainbow” that she alone among her family and
neighbors apparently believes in. But of
course she discovers that this world of Oz is also enchanted with witches,
hostile animals and scary ogres, all of whom have to be subdued. She has become the caretaker of the
discontented children inside all of us, who need periodic reassurance that love
and a place in the heart called home are for real. A supreme musical classic!
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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