In remembrance (sometimes fond, sometimes not) of our younger days supervising and buying movies for various video stores (remember them? Don't feel bad if you don't...)......we plunged into a non-stop viewing binge of films that have no relation to one another whatsoever, other than the fact that at one time or another we stocked them on those sturdy wire racks of videocassettes.....
So here goes......don't look for rhyme or reason in this selection....(we certainly didn't....)
The Beast Within (1982) At last a movie that addressed the pressing issue of man-sized Cicadas raping and impregnating women in the rural South. And pity the poor offspring of this unholy, unwholesome union between a hot blonde and an overgrown insect.......when then the poor conflicted teen hits 17 years of age, it's his turn to have his face turn all bloaty and go full Cicada on yet another hapless girl.
Yes, it's as ridiculous and all-out nuts as it sounds......and we wouldn't have it any other way. 3 chirping stars (***).
Hanover Street (1979) The tireless popcorn movie writer-director Peter Hyams tries re-creating a typical 1940's star-crossed World War 2 romance......complete with a lush John Barry music score poured over the film like a 200 gallon barrel of maple syrup. An American B-25 pilot (Harrison Ford) falls into infatuated love with a British nurse (the generic, uninteresting Lesley Ann Downe) who's married to a an Intelligence agent (Christopher Plummer) about to embark on a dangerous behind-enemy-lines mission.
Guess who ends up on sharing the harrowing secret mission with Plummer.....yikes. Hyams, who also specialized in semi-smartass dialogue, throws in Richard Masur as Ford's Bombardier crew member, spouting a stream of modern, sarcastic one-liners that sound lifted from a rejected first draft script of "Catch 22". The whole thing's overwhelmingly corny and obvious, but to us, it was no less entertaining than Peter Bogdonovich's 40's pastiches like "The Last Picture Show" and "What's Up Doc"..3 stars (***)
Picnic (1955) Thwarted hopes and dreams in the corn fed Heartland......based on a Broadway play by the master of such stories, playwright William Inge.. ("Bus Stop", "Splendor In The Grass").
A rootless drifter (William Holden) wanders into a small Kansas town to look up a college chum (Cliff Robertson) and ends up romancing his pal's unsettled, restless fiance (Kim Novak) and shaking up the whole town in one way or another, revealing his own wayward turns of fortune as well as everybody else's........
Holden's clearly ten years too old for the role, which needed a younger intense actor like James Dean (or someone equivalent) but he makes the most of it and he and Novak strike some real movie star sparks. (Ah, that slow dance to "Moonglow") The rest of the cast plays it at the top of their lungs as they're still trying to reach the upper balcony on matinee day at the theater......
Very traditional Hollywood product, but it's a kick (and visually jarring) to see the cast surrounded by hundreds of real Kansas extras recruited for the titular big town Labor Day picnic. They crowd around the actors looking like they're watching a zoo exhibit of exotic animals.....or a crime scene.....2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).
40 Carats (1973) & Only When I Laugh (1981) Speaking of theater matinees, here's a couple of creaking, mechanical comedies that were originally designed to tickle the fancies of middle-aged matrons out for a Wednesday afternoon outing on Broadway.
The film versions of such things always seem to land dead on arrival, appealing to a long missing (and older) mass audience that preferred to say home and watch TV, which is where these movies properly belonged.
"40 Carats" offered the odd spectacle of watching Liv Ullman the reigning queen of Scandinavian cinematic angst, enjoy a passionate affair with a young American (Edward Albert) who's 20 years her junior. Uh......okaaaayyyy/
The affair somewhat stuns, surprises ,scandalizes and to some extent, amuses her immediate family including her mother (Binnie Barnes), her 17 year old daughter (Deborah Raffin) and her rakish ex husband (Gene Kelly). A meeting with her potential in-laws goes awry, but true love prevails amid a non-stop flurry of tired gags......you begin to wonder how any of the actors managed to stay awake.
We barely could. 1 star (*)
"Only When I Laugh" comes from that one man human gag machine Neil Simon, adapting his play "The Gingerbread Lady" about an alcoholic actress (Marsha Mason, Simon's wife) fresh out of rehab and attempting to rekindle a relationship with her teen daughter (Kristy McNichol).
As machine tooled as this project is, we didn't mind so much because Mason always found a way to make her Simon-ized characters seem real, even as they're forced to recite out a continuous stream of oh so carefully composed one-liners. (You can practically hear the sound of Simon typing them.)
The real bonus here was getting McNichol into the movie, who brings a natural, more realistic spontaneity and charm into the Simon-verse, where everybody can't wait for the other person to stop talking so they can pump out the next little quip. For those two alone 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
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