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Reviews
The Deadly Affair (1967)
Obscure Lumet film is hit and miss
I can't vouch for its adherence to the book, Call For the Dead. It's Le Carre, so that means it leans toward the cerebral, humanistic side of spy films. It's not really a thriller until its last moments. What's looking at here are a couple of good performances, specifying those of Simone Signoret and Harry Andrews, who have done the best here with their characters. Mason, however, comes across as a rather muddled version of Smiley, and his wife's indiscretions seem more blatant than we see elsewhere in Le Carre's novels.
I thought that the Shakespeare-related scenes come off as a bit heavy-handed, and Lynn Redgrave (coming off her success in Georgy Girl) is supposed to provide some comic relief but which isn't very comic.
I had been wanting to see this film for a long time, as Lumet is one of the best directors of the era (although his stuff could not be termed auteurish). Add Freddie Young as cinematographer and on paper it looks great. So much of film looks needlessly drab, but probably accurate as far as the English weather goes.
There's a couple of bits of miscasting, I believe. Schell is much too young to have worked with Mason during the war. And Harriet Andersson seems totally out of place here and I thought her acting pretty bad (Ingmar Bergman used her in nine of his films, so she might not have embraced this role).
I'd prefer to have given it 6.5 instead of 7.
Mean Streets (1973)
Thinly plotted calling card for Marty and Bobby
Overlong with not much of a plot. De Niro is on the edge of overacting in some scenes, and gets top billing somehow over Harvey Keitel, who is really the main character. Meanwhile, Marty figures out what sort of neat camera angles he can fit in whether it makes sense or not. Since Marty loves his rock and roll, he puts as many of his favorite tunes in as he can, but this is clumsily done, with the next tune suddenly blaring in the middle of a scene. But what's awful about that is that the music has no bearing whatsoever on what's happening in the film. The fight scene in the pool hall is unintentionally funny, as the combatants don't seem to be so much fighting as dragging each other from one corner of the room to another so that Marty's cameraman can do a continuous tracking shot. If they can trimmed it down by about 20 minutes it would have been a better film since it doesn't have much plot. This is one of those cases where critics were overly generous and audience reaction was more accurate. It's interesting to compare it with The Godfather from the previous year. In that film, we see a well-run criminal operation, and here we see some two-bit crooks who are in their 30's but act like teenage gang members. I don't know if that was Marty's intention, but it makes the whole thing look a bit silly. Watch for a wordless Marty cameo as he stands in a doorway next to our leads.
Viaggio in Italia (1954)
Overrated
Although not an out-and-out bad film, it seems that critics have been revisionist in declaring this a masterpiece. Currently, the website TSPDT which has crunched the numbers for nearly 24,000 films has determined that (based on many critic reviews and best movie lists) JTI is the 68th best film ever made. At the time it was released, it failed to get nominated for any awards and was not popular with audiences.
But modern critics think of it as something way ahead of its time with its theme of a failing marriage. But it doesn't age that well; it is simply an artifact of 1950's European cinema. To be sure, while other filmmakers in Europe were still making costume dramas or taking inspiration from American film noir, Rossellini was boldly trying for something different: the study of two people with their failed hopes and desires -- the culmination of perhaps unrealistic expectations. It's not easy to pull off, since there are just so many scenes one can do to display the disconnect before it becomes wearisome.
There's way too much of Ingrid's character driving around Naples, thinking out loud about how unhappy her husband makes her, for instance. I found her visits to various tourist attractions rather awkwardly done and repetitive. How many scenes do you need of her being distracted as the tour guide tries in vain to interest her in the ruins?
But what sank the film entirely for me was the final scene, which is so abrupt that it just seems totally unrealistic. If Rossellini had more gradually moved the action in that direction it would have been more believable.
Duel in the Sun (1946)
Probably being too generous with the stars
The only thing that I would add to the other reviewers is that, as recounted in "City of Nets" by Otto Friedrich, Selznick was on set meddling constantly with King Vidor's direction (by the way, someone else mentioned Vidor as a name director, but he was basically a mediocre director churning out mediocre films. No auteur, for sure. HIs only real triumphs are the silent films "The Crowd" and "The Big Parade".) During the climactic scene, Selznick rushed over and sprinkled more fake blood on the actors, at which point Vidor threw up his hands and said "You can take this picture and shove it", whereby he jumped in his limo and proceeded westward toward L. A. The crew stood and watched as the limo disappeared into the hills in the far distance. Selznick said, "Well, that's it for today." Apparently Peck got it wrong when he said that Vidor was fired.
Im Westen nichts Neues (2022)
It's like Groundhog Day...
...But the soldiers fight the same senseless battle over and over and over again. Apparently this has nothing in common with the book except the title. Since I haven't read the book, I won't gnash my teeth like many have done, no doubt rightly.
But for purposes of reviewing this on its own (ahem) merits, I'll stick to its flaws as a motion picture. There isn't a single female speaking part in the film. There is literally nothing but battles or small intervals between battles. There are long, much too long, takes on soldiers' faces, perhaps to signal to the dimmest of viewers that what they are seeing is not some minor discomfort that will pass shortly, but that there is severe trauma occurring. The script has real dialogue problems or is it that the filmmaker wants to dumb it down so much as to amplify its very simple message: war is hell for those who fight it, while the folks responsible for starting it are fat and oblivious. This is repeated over and over again. You don't need two and a half hours to convey a very simple premise. It comes off as pretentious and determined to out-gross us with gore we've seen in films like Saving Private Ryan.
This is a really bad film, and giving it 3 stars is generous; maybe its production values deserve most of the stars, and I shudder to think how much money was spent on this garbage.
Quadrophenia (1979)
Not the story Pete Townshend wrote
Loosely based on the rock opera, and I mean loosely. Other than the music of the Who, it bears little resemblance to the lyrics of Townshend's mature work. Instead, what we get is more akin to Rebel Without a Cause, minus a compelling story and good acting. Phil Daniels is execrable as Jimmy, who instead of being an angst-filled teen is an admired pill-popping bloke. He's unlikable and the central character. I wish I could think of something positive, but nothing comes to mind. The director, who had never heard of, comes from UK television and hasn't had a particularly stellar career. The scenes of Jimmy with his parents are atrociously directed and acted, and the words they are forced to say are some of the worst writing for a major motion picture. I'm surprised that Townshend and the rest of the Who signed on to this; they must have thrown a lot of money at them.
Inside Daisy Clover (1965)
Hopelessly dated and a bad idea anyway
Oh boy. I had some misgivings about this one, but thought it might be fun to see Redford and Wood together in some light entertainment. The whole thing is preposterously plotted and puts one's teeth on edge with the repeated and repeated again rendition of this loathsome song, sung by someone else and not Natalie Wood. Her character is not given a lot to do and Wood decides not to do much of anything with it. Redford's character is one-dimensional as a movie star who thinks it fun to sleep with and even marry an underage girl and then abandon her. There's really no one to root for because it's just about Daisy being exploited by everyone in sight. The best that I can say is that Plummer does a passable job as a slimy studio head.
You can tell a lot of money was spent on this crap. It's in Panavision and they got the great Charles Lang to film it. And not good for Robert Mulligan's reputation after directing To Kill a Mockingbird. Dreadful stuff.
Nobel Son (2007)
Ludicrous nonsense
How they got Rickman, Steenburgen, Pullman, and De Vito to sign up for this terrible film is baffling. In the DVD extras they talk about a script full of "twists and turns" that "keep the audience guessing." I kept guessing all right; about whether this was going to get better. No, it just gets more ludicrous. The absurdity centers around Rickman's character, who couldn't possibly be a Nobel Prize winner; in fact, the writer insults all NB winners with how he is portrayed -- not just obnoxious, but completely devoid of any redeeming qualities. That just makes him a cartoon whom we are supposed to despise. But hold on, he gets serious competition from the two young male actors; the son is transformed before our very (unbelieving) eyes in the second half, and the other is not just bitter about his father, it has turned him into a psychopath. Plot holes abound. Multiple film genres are explored, some for only a few minutes. This is dreadful stuff, folks, and the only reason we saw this was to see Rickman. Not worth it.
1923: Nature's Empty Throne (2022)
Too many unbelievable elements
I am going to stop here. I had my doubts after watching the first episode, but I can't continue with this series.
Let's take maybe the least offensive flaw first: the music. The director (and creator/writer) wants to gear the music to what emotions they want you to have during the scene. They don't give the audience the credit to decide for themselves; if I notice the music that much, then it's probably too manipulative of the audience.
But there's a lot of overacting going on too. Or is it the script that traps the actors into it with poor direction? First of all, there's the macho macho man in Kenya, who takes a leopard to the face but still manages minor lacerations (nowhere near his handsome countenance though) and then doesn't even flinch when he's being treated. This guy is ridiculously virile, and women giggle and swoon en masse at times in his presence. And we are supposed to believe that Alexandra will dump her fiance in a heartbeat after a few minutes of conversation with him. And he isn't even nice to her.
The guy is damaged, he has nightmares about the war, he is your standard brooding loner. What a guy. And I guessed wrong that he would feel some guilt for not getting the leopard before it tore the throat out of a beautiful blonde. He's more like The Terminator than a human being...
But meanwhile, back in Montana, there is the nastiness between our hero cattle ranchers (of course, the Duttons!) and the evil sheep ranchers, who even after some serious warnings don't back off. I mean, how unlikely is it that the only survivor of the mass hanging is the owner? In early Bond movie fashion, Dutton and Company ride off instead of actually making sure they're dead (this sort of thing was lampooned in Austin Powers, where Scott suggests to Dr. Evil that he just dispatch Austin with Scott's gun instead of using the ill-tempered sea bass setup).
Now, I'm not a big fan of Catholicism, but this subplot is over the top preposterous. I mean, this priest and this nun are way worse in the morality and cruelty department than our sheep ranchers. They should hire this priest to do in the Duttons! Yes, there is some truth to how Native Americans were treated badly by religious zealots, but this depiction is about as far away from nuance than you can get. Even the dimmest viewer will get the message.
So why was I watching in the first place? Because I like Helen Mirren and was interested to find out if Harrison Ford could pull his part off. Sadly, there just isn't enough of them in it for my taste.
By the way, that hairstyle on the (yet another) beautiful blonde who's about to be married doesn't look very 20's Montana to me. Just like the blonde in Kenya. They must have had some stylist beam in from the future.
Taylor Sheridan gets my "James Cameron 'King of the World' Award" for simple-minded melodrama bordering on soap opera.
The Apartment (1960)
Shirley MacLaine's best performance?
It's my vote. She should have gotten Best Actress (the Academy gave it to Liz Taylor for the forgotten film Butterfield 8). What she does physically (note the hand gestures) and with her face (no dialogue needed to feel what she is thinking and feeling). It might be my favorite Wilder/Lemmon film (yes, over Some Like It Hot). Wilder and Diamond are playful with the repeats (the hands showing "four", the mirror, the key, the cookie crumbling, and of course "mensch"). It's a masterful entertainment with many wonderful and touching moments contrasting with the callous male behavior. It's a film that stands up to repeated viewings, and it's surprising that there were so many negative reviews when it came out. Billy Wilder's masterpiece.
Licorice Pizza (2021)
Anderson cobbles together anecdotes with little story
Although intermittently amusing (mostly due to the presence of Bradley Cooper's over-the-top portrayal of Jon Peters), stringing together a series of vignettes with no story arc makes for a film with some tedious scenes. There's essentially no dramatic tension with the two young people, which requires some padding with the appearance of Sean Penn and Tom Waits to provide an
action sequence of no consequence. The fact is, without their star power there would be no real interest there and instead some wondering why the heck that's in the movie. A lot of critics say that "not a lot happens, but that doesn't matter, because it's so much fun!" Well, that's just, like your opinion, man.
Four Friends (1981)
Difficult to relate what's wrong without spoilers
It's not a bad film, but it has some serious problems. Steve Tesich, who was born in Yugoslavia, does another semi-autobiographical turn (the first was Breaking Away) with his script about three guys and the girl they are obsessed with. Well, it's not really explained why they are. But, okay. It starts off with them in high school in the early 60's and ends in the late 60's.
We get the whole generation gap thing painted in broad strokes, especially labored in the relationship between Danilo and his father. One of the problems here is that the script and the cast just aren't talented enough, and the dialogue is rather labored.
The actor playing Georgia can't seem to understand nuance, or else Arthur Penn is to blame. The problem with Danilo's character (based on Tesich?) is that it's underwritten; he's too much of a blank slate, and as a result is given to a lot of blank stares. It's hard to believe that this is the same director who helmed Bonnie and Clyde.
There's a scene with Georgia at the wild, psychedelic cliche of a party that for no other reason than to shock us ends in tragedy. Was this a nod to Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" to drugs, which was so high-profile at the time?
Rather than have some expository scenes that build up to a dramatic event, we just get the dramatic event. It's just not believable. Was there a lot of footage cut out? The worst is the murder-suicide at Danilo's wedding. It just comes out of left field and seems preposterous. It doesn't belong in this film; it's jarring and does not fit with the tone the film tries to set.
The widow, who has not only seen her husband kill their daughter and then himself, has a grief-stricken scene with Danilo explaining that her son has just died (of some unexplained illness that foreshadowed the event). Danilo sits there with his patented blank stare.
After that, I just couldn't take anything seriously.
Excalibur (1981)
Dreadful
Whoever wrote the dialogue for this film should have been fired. Wincingly terrible, and the actors seem to realize that and hardly put in much effort. This is the same Boorman who made Point Blank and Deliverance?
It had a reasonable budget and was packed with some of Britain's good or great (like Helen Mirren) actors. But that laughable screenplay canceled out the production values. It's not even bad in a way that would make it camp.
One website that crunches all the critic ratings puts the film at 839th of all time (out of a list of over 20,000 films). I've seen enough films from the history of the art form to find that exceedingly generous. Sort of inexplicable, actually.
Ryan's Daughter (1970)
A good story marred by excessive length and poor musical score
It's worth seeing for the beautiful photography by Freddie Young (who did Zhivago and Lawrence) and a fine performance by Trevor Howard. John Mills got a Best Supporting Actor award as Michael, the "village idiot." He doesn't so much act as display the crooked teeth insert and goggle at whatever he looks at. Ironically, he seems to be the only one who knows what's going on at times.
But the film is way too long; Lean at this point got it into his head that every film needed to be "epic." The result is poorly paced, with some scenes going on and on. With some clever editing (after all, this is how Lean got started in film) the story could have lost an hour easily.
And the musical score is dreadful, with totally inappropriate bombastic brass blaring obnoxiously during scenes that required setting an entirely different mood. Rather alarmingly, the score was nominated for a Grammy.
The critics tore into Lean savagely, which was an overreaction; there are some real problems here, but overall it is still a very good film; it highlights both the anti-English views of the village people and their willingness to take action, while also showing how provincial and mean-spirited they could be to their own.
The storm sequence is the dramatic highlight and provides the only real sustained tension in the film.
Hatari! (1962)
Great action scenes, but weak script
Critics have been too kind to this film, which doesn't age well. It's trying to be an action film, a romance, and a comedy all at once, and it fails on the last two. We are supposed to believe that the 25-year-old Dallas falls for the 52-year-old Sean (played by a much older-looking than that Wayne). She plays the helpless sort of female that might have been tolerated in the 40's but in the early 60's just merely insults women. And Elsa can't act. For some reason Hawks wants to throw in some screwball comedy humor, but the writing of this (and the romance) is terrible; in fact, cringeworthy. Much of the hoped for hilarity centers around Red Buttons and his drinking. Without the admittedly exciting action scenes of capturing the animals, the film is dreadful. But in 2021 the idea of locking up these magnificent creatures in zoos doesn't exactly please viewers these days.
Le souffle au coeur (1971)
Multiple problems with this film
Not sure where to start. Much is made elsewhere about the incestuous scene toward the end of the film; I'll try to concentrate on why this supposed satire of wealthy families fails in several respects.
I feel compelled to note that only watched this film based on its review by Pauline Kael, who could fail to understand a film at times. She called it:
mellow and smooth, exhilarating, irresistible, with its supremely logical yet witty and imaginative conclusion
oh, and:
in this context incest isn't serious -- and that, I guess, may really upset some people
Good lord. Incest, Pauline, is never not serious. But here are some of the other real problems: its pacing is erratic, from frenetic slapstick that is mean or humiliating by the various brothers, or slowed down to linger on blank expressions, mostly Laurent's, but also by his mother.
There is an attitude here that treats adultery as inconsequential or a source of more comedy, yet not treated satirically. You're never quite sure whether we are to be repelled or join in the "fun." Is Malle trying to provoke us by not taking a clear stance?
The jazz music erupts sporadically with no relation to the scene in which it is included, except in one where Laurent is upset with his mother and turns up the phonograph when she tells him she has a bad headache. These Oedipal scenes between the two become tiresome. I'm sorry, was I supposed to laugh here too?
The final scene of the film is supposed to elicit some catharsis, but Laurent's irresponsible behavior (is no one concerned that he might get a teenage girl pregnant?) is the occasion for the entire family to laugh heartily. This is an entirely amoral, narcissistic, nihilistic family (although Laurent, like his family, are shown to be devout Catholics!) who approve of his behavior, and this denouement announces that Laurent has finally become one of them: repulsive in every respect.
Dylda (2019)
Two damaged women behaving badly; spoilers halfway in my review.
It's almost impossible to review this film without spoilers. You can stop reading my review at my spoiler alert warning.
First of all, we aren't given any context or background on the two women; for instance, where are their parents and siblings? Instead, we only know their present situation, and their purported experiences in the war are not fleshed out at all, and may be fictional.
Dialogue is minimal, which means we really don't know who any of these people are or what they are feeling about themselves or others. The viewer cannot form an opinion about them other than by their actions, which are sometimes horrible, unfeeling, or cynical. There are brief glimpses of tenderness between the women, but much of the time they are just upset at each other and their predicament. Iya, or Beanpole, is almost a complete cipher, so one cannot decide who she is or whether we should care one way or the other about her. There is one thing that she does early on that is shocking and incomprehensible.
The pace of the film is extremely slow and wears the viewer down. Will I ever care what happens next?
One of the most annoying aspects of the film is the cinematography, which is dominated by super-saturated reds and greens for the entire film. And I'm talking about at a level that is preposterous.
SPOILER ALERT...
The nudity is purely gratuitous. The scenes in which nudity occurs are not even the sexual episodes, and only when the women are bathing and conversing.
So why does Iya kill the child? Because she does not want the responsibility to feed him? His mother does not even demand an explanation. Is this realistic?
Were they actually in the Army as anti-aircraft gunners? Or was that a story they told to disguise the fact that they were actually forced into prostitution? Or were they? Could that be a story that Masha tells the parents of the young man she is using to terminate her involvement with them all?
Is the relationship between Iya and Masha sexual? Or is that deliberately made ambiguous?
In other words, the director/screenwriter is messing with the audience for over two hours, trying to consciously create a "controversial film". The film does not work on any sort of level. Three stars is generous, and only an attempt at getting someone to read my warnings.
Brick (2005)
High School Neo-Noir Misfire
After you get past the ludicrous dialogue (more suited to a 40's setting, but even then third-rate) and the endless fistfights, you find that there isn't much left of this under-written first feature from Rian (cute spelling) Johnson. Given the dialogue, it could have been played for laughs, like The Naked Gun, but apparently the writer/director wants us to take this film seriously. Although set at some Southern California high school and environs, other than the Vice Principal and one mom, there aren't any other speaking parts for adults. Richard Roundtree, as the VP, as one big scene with Brendan, our intrepid student investigator, which plays like the police captain lecturing his recalcitrant junior cop. Believable? Uh, no. Johnson went on to direct some mediocre films, including the Knives Out franchise.
California Split (1974)
HIghly improvised frenetic "comedy" has no story arc
The "professional" film critics have been far too generous to this less than mediocre effort by the erratic Robert Altman. Although coming from the most celebrated period of his career in film, this is one of those all too frequent missteps. Employing his almost patented overlapping dialogue technique to the point of incoherence and viewer annoyance, Altman unleashes Elliott Gould with absolutely no directorial restraint. The result is a sometimes amusing but totally unstructured and unaffecting mishmash.
It's hard to blame anyone for the performances, though. The cast does the best with what material they are given, but given the dominance of the zany Gould, we have nothing else to really to focus on here. There's certainly no depth to any of the characters and basic stuff like character motivation has been thrown out the window. It's as if the filmmakers decided to just "do their thing, man" with the producers' bucks; after all, Altman was coming off of "The Long Goodbye", a terrific neo-noir and had the convincing successes of "MASH" and "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" not that far behind him.
It's hard to see how the film could have been any better without adding some substantive thing like a plot. It seems like you would have to take the script (if there really was any) and do a lot more than tweaking. For instance, a complete rewrite.
After this, Altman made what many consider his masterpiece: "Nashville". But then there were at least fourteen films that no one really remembers at all, some of which were just dreadful, like "Popeye". Then came "The Player", a wonderful sendup of Hollywood. This is a career so totally hit and miss that critics can pluck one out like "California Split" and elevate it beyond its worth. Watching it sort of wore me out.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
John Huston's masterpiece, and an essential film in the American canon
I probably don't anything to add regarding the direction and acting in this film; it is superb. The photography is adequate and does not get in the way of the focus: storytelling in a moral vein. Huston's pacing of the action is also top notch.
Are there any flaws? Very few for this viewer. I am not a fan of Max Steiner's often over the top musical scores, and at times his music detracts or is incongruous for the screen action. The other biggie for me is the repeated attention to the absence of water in the mountains, yet we see a gushing torrent once the prospectors have built their sluice.
Still, this is a must-see film for cinephiles around the world. Just see the other reviews for what it has to say about human beings.
Ford v Ferrari (2019)
I wanted to like it
I was really looking forward to watching this film, but I was disappointed about how Mangold directed it, some overacting, and a too melodramatic script.
First, the director expects us to believe that two race car drivers will drive side-by-side giving each other the evil eye while careening down the straight at 210 miles per hour. Better yet, in some early scenes they shout at each other in their open-top race cars, as if they could be heard over the sound of the engines. Mangold also channels Ben-Hur's chariot race, with cars nudging each other sideways. During the Le Mans race, he cuts away multiple times to driver Miles' wife and child watching the event on TV. I'm sorry, but no network then or now would televise a 24-hour race in its entirety. I can almost hear the laughter of anyone in the racing industry who watched all the absurdities (I am sure they would have a longer list than this one).
Next, the director did not rein in the outrageous overacting by Christian Bale as Miles. Add in the demonic glowering of Letts as Henry Ford and you have a cartoon, not a well-conceived treatment of an historical event for American racing. As is par for the course with these testosterone-driven movies, the female characters are destined to be background cheerleaders for their men; in this one, there's only one of them.
Equal blame then to the scriptwriters, who came up with a predictable plot line in the best (or worst?) tradition of American melodrama. We have the bad guys (Ford and Beebe) and the good guys (Shelby and Miles), and everyone else is window dressing. Not a shred of nuance here, which should be an insult to the moviegoer, but I guess the bar has been set pretty low for decades now.
The racing scenes themselves are well-filmed, with lots of low-angle shots that create even more of a feel of being there. A lot of viewers want explosions, and you get more than your fair share of those here -- maybe too many to be realistic.
It's unfortunate that in a film of almost epic length you don't get a good exposition of the friendship of Miles and Shelby. Unless I'm wrong, and it just consisted of a lot of bantering and occasional meaningful looks.
A Hidden Life (2019)
Not enough story to justify its length, and without a bit of nuance
First of all, after making three crummy shorter movies in the 2010's, this was supposed to be a return to form, a form that since 1998 had consisted of glacially-paced "philosophical" films of epic length. They featured beautiful nature photography and generally simple people baring their souls via narration, all wrapped up in long takes with minimal interaction between actors. I'm sorry to report that this is worse than those, because Malick has an even thinner story to tell, and with minimal exposition to boot.
But the film drags terribly due to repetition (for long stretches, there's just farming to film), little interaction between characters, and laughably cartoonish depictions of every German soldier with the teensiest bit of power. On top of all that, Malick has his German and Austria farmers speak English, most Germans not engaged in conversation (usually ardent Nazis) speaking or often screaming in German, and farmer-Nazi conversations also done in English. If this wasn't Malick, the critics would have eviscerated him.
But since there isn't any explanations given of who is who, what the relationships are like, and no back story, there is only the farmer's long drawn out fate to witness. No conversations about what he is doing, how it will affect his children, how it might end up being exactly a meaningless act that will lead to a life of hardship for his family. How about this terse, harsh summary: Austrian farmer objects to taking Nazi oath, is imprisoned and never sees his wife and children again, and eventually is unceremoniously killed by his jailers. It shouldn't take three hours to tell this story.
The Trouble with Harry (1955)
Why HItch shouldn't have done comedy
I just viewed this film after seeing it about 50 years ago. It doesn't age well, and it was probably not received that well at the time. The black comedy might have been more daring for its time, but today just seems quaint. What doesn't help is poor pacing and the presence of the dreadful John Forsythe.
In Shirley MacClaine's first film she manages that pixie-like charm that was to become her trademark, but she is stuck in the same awful blue dress for the duration; the action all takes place on a single day. What action there is; its meandering pace of conversation-heavy bantering gets old after a while.
Hitchcock doesn't seem too concerned with that, along with the terribly bright studio lighting that casts shadows in multiple directions. There are some plot holes here and there, and you find yourself wondering why a character just didn't do this instead of that based on the situation. There are a few continuity issues that most people wouldn't notice, like how the pile of dirt looks identical for three or more diggings (were they in a hurry such that they couldn't move the dirt around a bit?)
The film just ends on a joke that misfires and underlines just how underachieving the whole thing is. But the score by Bernard Herrmann is quite good -- just not enough to save this subpar Hitchcock from being considered worthwhile.
As an aside, I've seen most of his sound films and read several books on Hitchcock, and of those, I'd say this one is in the bottom 10.
The Last Seduction (1994)
Crummy neo-noir suffers from cartoonish characters and fizzles at the end
The problems with this film could have been fixed with some adjustments here and there, I suppose, but there isn't any nuance to the characters. Especially poor is Mike Swale, who we are supposed to believe he could hold down a job at Interstate Insurance despite his massive stupidity. At every opportunity he does the wrong thing and can't seem to see what a sap he is being played for. He's incapable of even the simplest analysis of Bridget/Wendy's motives, and it takes a huge suspension of disbelief to accept that the sex is worth all the abuse.
Anyway, let's look at some of the most egregious errors. First off, Clay comes home with the $700 grand and promptly takes a shower; this after we've been shown what a nasty piece of work Bridget is. She makes off with the cash. C'mon!
The two of them are married! He doesn't know what she's capable of? This could have been handled differently (i.e., more believably) after a bit of story discussion between the writer and the director.
Next, Bridget shows up in "cow country", which ends up being western New York state and she immediately and luckily finds the town's most naive and gullible sex-starved male. After this exquisite convenience, Mike inexplicably keeps returning to Bridget-now-Wendy despite being treated badly. I mean, I get that the sex is supposed to be great, but wouldn't Mike have some discussion with someone (his buddies?) about what's going on? No alarm bells? Okay, even if we accept that Mike is dumb as a rock and only thinks with his small head, there are other problems to come.
Clay hires a private dick, Harlan, to track down Bridget, and he finally does, but suddenly he's acting as stupid as Mike: she asks to see his genitalia while they are driving (now, he knows, presumably, from Clay who he's dealing with here) and she manages to stage a fatal car accident for him, although she seems to have escaped with no visible injury (not even a band-aid in sight). What if he hadn't died? Hmm..
Clay seems bemused at Harlan's demise (you need at least one sympathetic character, but we won't get one) and hires another one, but this one is down there with Mike in the I.Q. department. Bert is not only obviously parked permanently out in front of her home (when does he sleep? eat? go to the bathroom?), Clay TELLS her that Bert is there. When Wendy brings out cookies for him, wouldn't he be suspicious? Why would he eat the cookies? Apparently Clay didn't share what a black widow is wife is!
Wendy convinces Mike that she has killed someone in Florida and has been paid the aforementioned money -- she shows it to Mike. Mike, of course, accepts this assertion without checking into it. She also tells him she knows all about how he married a transvestite. Isn't that an impossibility?
What really got to me is the final scene: this is where Mike has been talked into
killing someone for her (to show he really loves her!). Of course, that's Clay. Clay narrowly escapes death, but he's handcuffed and anklecuffed, and guess what? Mike doesn't have the key; she does! Now, get this: Clay finally convinces this imbecile of what's going on, and they wait for her to come into the apartment. Mike has a gun on her, and Clay doesn't ask him to frisk her for weapons (or take off her clothes...). Anyway, Clay actually believes she is going to unlock the cuffs, but instead (oops) she kills him with an orally applied dose of Mace. But wait! She even tells Mike that her plan is to make him rape her now, and he's so mad, he does! While she's on a 911 call telling them she's being raped! This is how ludicrous the ending is.
Under Capricorn (1949)
Suffers from weak script, miscasting, cheesy production values
And not only that, but Joseph Cotten looks completely glum and uninterested (he was overheard on the set calling it "Under Cornycrap"). It's hard to imagine it could have been much better, but casting Cotten as the rough, uneducated stable hand who lucked out in life was seriously wrong. It's another one of Hitchcock's pet projects that went through a lot of scriptwriters, and it shows. Hitch also made the mistake of thinking that the long take filming should be something other than the one-time stunt that "Rope" should have been. Much of the production budget was taken up by Bergman's and Hitch's fees; this resulted in the cheesy miniatures of the house and environs. As if that isn't enough, you have the very attractive Ingrid Bergman wearing some of the most awful costumes I've ever seen in a costume drama (and I've seen many). It's a stage play that should have remained that way, and Hitch seems to have gotten so bored that he hardly elicited any sort of performance out of anyone. Bergman's confession scene is the only not-entirely-dreadful part of the film, and I feel sorry that she had to keep acting through eight continuous minutes of her melodramatic monologue.