54 (1998)

It's said there's a longer cut of 54 that can miraculously turn this mediocre dud into a great motion picture... but if you've prepared a plain meal and add more food, you'll probably wind up with... more plain food on the table: And it's a stilted, cautious one at that, since... despite the R-rated T&A raging inside the infamous New York City 1970's Studio 54 nightclub, where only mostly-ugly rich celebrities or beautiful nobodies could enter... there's a standard-dialogue/TV-movie vibe from the very beginning, even making Mike Myers' otherwise decent attempt at playing gay nightclub mogul Steve Rubell seem watered-down, cliche and predictable...

And back when flavor-of-the-month Ryan Phillippe (here allowed into the club while buddy Mark Ruffalo's too ugly to enter) may have been a more legitimate actor than former rapper Marky Mark Walhberg, there's simply no touching PT Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS, which 54 attempts but without the inspired muse of Scorsese-meets-Tarantino's contagious celebration of gritty exploitation cinema (and Phillipe's stale narration proves how comparably brilliant GOODFELLAS' Ray Liotta was)... Instead, 54's a bland one-night-stand that lacks the necessary nerve to go all the way while random side-characters lethargically add to a mainstream feel-good movie (with pallid traces of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER melodrama), clumsily attempting yet another anything-goes/based-on-a-true-story expose: Like naive bartender Brecken Meyer's Afterschool Special-style drug addiction; Salma Hayek's attempt to be a music star straight from an episode of FAME; or Neve Campbell's famous TV starlet, half as pretty as the pretty boy supposedly obsessed with her... So, overall, there's no saving a picture that has recently laid practically all blame on producer Harvey Weinstein, supposedly having edited-out the story's inner-core, and yet, if that's the case, how do you explain PULP FICTION? Well... the difference is the director, folks, who in this case didn't jump in with both feet... to end up wading in extremely shallow waters. Rates: **

DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA (2022)

They took a breezy sit-com plot, about a movie being made in the Downton Abbey house, combined with a side-story about Maggie Smith inheriting a French villa from an ex lover, and split apart the rich and poor characters to where neither can do very much to help either story along...

For instance, Carson is the most against the production movie company's disruption of the house, so they send him to France... But wouldn't he be better batting heads with the studio? God knows, that would have made for a terrific episode... 

As for the overall drama/melodrama that the series is known for, there aren't too many shocks or surprises except for a searing epilogue, a few near-trysts along the way and, not counting a semi-intriguing history lesson about silent film stars fearing the introduction of "talkies" (already known from Singin' in the Rain), it's in one ear, out the other, and without any necessary tension or conflict... Ironically, up on the big screen, the characters seem much smaller, somehow, while the director doesn't savor the larger-than-life beauty and elegance of Downton or even France for that matter...Then again, for lightweight comedy, it's not a bad 90-minutes: Just don't except A New Era to equal the terrific British series that, for the most part, feels far too "Hollywood" here. Rates: **

BORN AGAIN (1978)

Part Watergate political-historical biopic but mostly Christian propaganda that includes veteran actor (and our personal favorite) Dana Andrews quoting C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity to a somewhat selfish, partially greedy and supposedly only-coincidentally guilty Richard Nixon lawyer Chuck Coulson thrown into jail; and that's where the good stuff occurs, especially thanks to the always-intense blaxploitation ace Raymond St. Jacques, the tough guy in the federal prison...

Who initially bullies and then protects Coulsin, played by Dean Jones, usually cast in Disney flicks as their then-modern-day Jimmy Stewart; thus that kind of man-next-door quality keeps this character-study down-home and intriguing albeit one-sided and self-promoting yet never boring but not altogether great either but, for what can be called a 2-hour cinematic Alter Call (resembling a Television Movie-of-the-Week), BORN AGAIN fits both the title and purpose, nicely enough to pass the time since these kind of preachy melodramas can often feel like eternity. Rates: ***/12

OLIVER'S STORY (1978)

Poor Ryan O'Neal couldn't catch a break. Even two films now considered classics didn't make money in the 1970's upon release. His daughter Tatum's BAD NEWS BEARS beat the pants off both Stanley Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON and Walter Hill's THE DRIVER...

While the comparably mainstream and now basically forgotten OLIVER'S STORY did even worse... ironic being the sequel to what's considered the first most lucrative pre-JAWS summer blockbuster, LOVE STORY, as Ryan himself had a reason/theory of why it failed: Intellectual thinking man's ingenue Nicola Pagett (resembling cult starlet Pamela Franklin) was supposed to be the girl he winds up with as, early on, they share a blind date, which is more interesting and with far more chemistry than any of O'Neal's scenes with wooden rich girl Candace Bergen, who, being the studio's choice of perfect and pretty, made it so Nicola's third act return was left on the cutting room floor. And while OLIVER'S STORY is not a bad picture... with a particularly clever style of quick-editing so the scene being cut-from seems deliberately unfulfilled (like happens in ROSEMARY'S BABY)... there are relaxing moments within the mahogany-hued classy-to-poor New York City where idealistic rich kid Oliver, a lawyer, fights a slum lord with student employees: yet there's simply no inner peace or contentment for the titular character or his titular story: all he needed was the right girl, who was perfectly whin reach. Rates: ***

Nicola Pagett as Joanna Stone in Oliver's Story

Nicola Pagett as Joanna Stone in Oliver's Story

Nicola Pagett with Ryan O'Neal in Oliver's Story

Ann Risley & Deborah Rush are two bar girls in Oliver's Story

ANATOMY OF A SEDUCTION

year: 1979
rating: ***1/2

Susan Flannery is the perfect fit here. She looks older than her age, which is forty, but she looks incredible. Such a beautiful shaped face and a terrific figure...

Jameson Parker on the other hand, as a college student half her age, in real life is only eight years younger, and it shows. They don't look that far apart in age in this female-fantasy television-movie just like they aren't in real life, so this May/November romance is more March/June, and no big deal, really: Just two great looking people hooking up, and the suspense of her best friend Rita Moreno finding out she's with her son, or her son finding out she's with a guy not much older than him, isn't as effective on paper as the actors try their best to keep reminding the audience: a taboo romance this isn't being so perfect for each other and their chemistry is just too relaxed for even that aspect, when it's just the two alone and in love, making love, to matter. But it's nice seeing Susan Flannery in all her middle aged beauty. She's prettier than most college girls try hard to be.

A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951)

Charles Chaplin said this is the best film about (not set in, but about) America, and with all the one-dimensional class envy stereotypes, it makes sense since old Charlie didn't care much for America. Just like the movie. 

Film centers on the dreary nephew (raised on the evils of Christianity) of a rich and powerful businessman. The kid falls in love with beautiful Elizabeth Taylor, who plays a beautiful society girl. But before that he (eventually learns he) knocked-up a working girl even more cliché than the rude-rich snobs being she's so pitifully somber, discontented, shabby and neurotic.

As for the gorgeous-looking couple the audience is supposed to care about: Literally within ten minutes of knowing each other, Taylor tells Montgomery Clift she's fallen in love with him, and while love happens fast in old movies, this was a record-breaker, and in that, a shark-jumper. Followed by the semi-intriguing Film Noir style murder plot/morality tale that's too little too late in this highly-regarded "classic" that not only doesn't stand the test of time, it lays down and falls asleep in the process. GRADE: D+

WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

year: 1957
rating: **1/2

Another extremely overrated classic, and this one always compared to Otto Preminger's Anatomy Of A Murder, and Billy Wilder's stagey direction of an Agatha Christie stage-play mystery of Witness for the Prosecution couldn't be more different if it centered on purple unicorns traipsing through Iceland: The first is an existential courtroom drama about a man who's entirely guilty of murder, and here it's obvious someone's not telling the truth. Either a horribly aged once-perfect-looking Tyrone Power (with a gorgeous trophy in the wings played by Ruta Lee, pictured below): he's accused of killing a rich old lady befriended for need of a loan on an egg-beating invention, or the title character in Marlene Dietrich, who gives the best performance overall, especially having to do with a twist that really only works in repose...

Meanwhile, the always great acting team of Charles Laughton, as the flawed defense consul of the English Court, and real life wife-beard Elsa Lanchester, are only pretty good here, going back and forth more like another kind of stage play. Comedy, perhaps. Which simply doesn't fit here, and with everything mounting to the last five minutes, like mysteries do, this isn't one for rewatching: another major difference between Anatomy Of A Murder, a true classic that really needs a divorce from this otherwise semi-decent courtroom melodrama.

BARRY LYNDON (STANLEY KUBRICK)

article: Hating Barry Lyndon
year: 1975 rating: ****1/2 

Given how many takes the infamously picky and in some cases reportedly sadistic filmmaker Stanley Kubrick put his actors through — in watching any of his films, you're not only seeing what he's directed but what he's selected...

Any and every scene or moment was by his choice to fit within the, in this particular case, gorgeous landscape of a period piece/costume drama that is actually the antithesis of an Epic feature film: bordering on what feels like, after numerous viewings, a kind of subliminal parody on what would usually be a fulfilling fictional (adapted from classic-era literature) biopic on a person that, to spend hours on their existence, would eventually lead to a significant purpose...

But keep in mind when watching BARRY LYNDON it's a motion picture that takes the epic form and intentionally throws it both out the door and in the viewer's face...

Famously renown as merely an aesthetic masterpiece, filmed with natural lighting and a region dotted with castles only dreamed up beyond even a picture book's rendition...

The real twist is the revelation of a truly despicable man, played wonderfully selfish by Ryan O'Neal, who cunningly antagonized otherwise good people long before he became the chief antagonist against, basically, everyone: despite starting out as a sympathetic hero simply because he's the main/title character being centered on.

FEMALE JUNGLE

working title: THE HANGOVER

cast: Lawrence Tierney, Burt Kaiser, Kathleen Crowley, John Carradine, Jayne Mansfield
year: 1955 rating: ***1/2

Anvil-faced tough guy Lawrence Tierney is a cop who, drunk in a bar, escorts a lovely lady to her cab. She's killed and left on the street, and now he has to wander around, with a bad headache, town retracing his steps. Meanwhile we're introduced to more bar-folk, in an urban Agatha Christie style, including a lovely waitress played by Kathleen Crowley and her husband, unassuming Burt Kaiser (who also wrote and produced), a frustrated artist who draws caricatures for little pay. Then enter John Carradine. When our ingenue's alone in his house, a foreboding, accusational score pounces forth. Of course you know he's but a red-herring... And so the question remains: who done it and who'll get it next? This is sort of a mystery, sort of a Film Noir, with a totally misleading title, but a lot of fun with the poster's starlet, Jayne Mansfield, providing a glorified but scene-stealing cameo.

KINGS ROW

year: 1942

cast: Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan, Ann Sheridan

rating: ***1/2

There's something thoroughly hypnotic and intoxicating about this melodrama centering on a handful of unlucky individuals growing up in a strange dusty town the film's named after. Ronald Reagan, never known for his terrific acting ability, has enough charm to make you forget his limited range, and Robert Cummings is his perfect corny counterpart, always seeming ready to break into song - usually a sad one. The best performances are from the ever-competitive envy-ridden women either going insane or just about to. The camera sweeps to all the right angles, the music flows beautifully, but by the end, since most of the storyline jumps to and fro at a rather quick pace, it seems like a condensed epic, raising the enviable question: Where's the rest of it?

BORN TO KILL RELOCATED

title: BORN TO KILL

year: 1947

cast: Lawrence Tierney, Claire Trevor, Walter Slezak, Philip Terry, Audrey Long, Elisha Cook, Esther Howard

director: Robert Wise

rating: ***

CLICK HERE FOR THE NEW BORN TO KILL REVIEW AT THE NEW CULT FILM FREAK SITE

I CONFESS

title: I CONFESS

year: 1953

cast: Montgomery Clift

director: Alfred Hitchock

rating: **

I confess, I'm a big time Hitchock fan. I confess, I had never seen this movie until yesterday. And I confess, this one didn't do it for me. The Master seemed on sabbatical - I didn't feel his presence at all. I must also confess... I didn't even watch the entire movie. I guess I should now review the dream I had while sleeping through most of it...

FALLING IN LOVE

year: 1984

cast: Robert DeNiro, Meryl Streep, Harvey Keitel, Jane Kaczmarek

director: Ulu Grosbard

rating: **

Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep are two married, successful New York suburbanites who, after seeing each other on the same train, meet in a store where they start a conversation ("Don't we ride the same train?") and accidentally take each other's gifts. On Christmas Morning, DeNiro's wife gets Streep's husbands gift (a book on boating); and Streep's husband gets DeNiro's wife's gift (a book on gardening). That's the most clever aspect of this bland romance full of mumbling dialog and uncomfortably-silent conversations between two people who, although they have perfect marriages and beautiful children, should know better: but just can't help themselves. The major love scene is as sexy as mom and dad humping on a rainy afternoon, but, at times, the snail-paced build-up has a sort of mellow voyeuristic quality liken to French cinema, only without any depth or purpose. Harvey Keitel plays DeNiro's recently-divorced buddy, and it's strange seeing the wily thugs from "Mean Streets" as upper-class Manhattan yuppies. The movie sort of happens for a while, and then it's done.

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT

title: THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT

year: 1940

cast: George Raft, Ida Lupino, Humphry Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Alan Hale

rating: **1/2

Strange seeing Humphrey Bogart play second fiddle in any film (unless it stars James Cagney), this came out only a year before he become a top-billed sensation. George Raft and Bogart are truck driver brothers (who REALLY look like brothers) bullied by a mob syndicate... or something... causing trucks to crash and men to die. The special effects are really cool for 1940, including trucks driving off cliffs and exploding (models do wonders). If you can get past not seeing Bogart but for twenty minutes (and in a somewhat filler role), or trying to sustain disbelief that gorgeous gals like Ann Sheradin and Ida Lupino could be so in love with blockhead Raft - you'll enjoy this mildly entertaining "old movie". Ida Lupino steals the show after killing her millionaire husband (Alan Hale i.e. Skipper's Dad) and trying to frame Raft for it. She then goes bonkers in prison and thinks the doors (not the band, the things) want to kill her. Fun melodrama. Kick back and enjoy.

BODY HEAT

year: 1981

rating: *1/2

Pointless light-porn film noir exercise written and directed by the usually capable Lawrence Kasden has a beautiful woman Kathleen Turner and her stud lawyer lover, William Hurt, planning to kill her rich husband, Richard Crenna. Sex and violence has something in common; if there's no reason for it, it seems downright silly on screen. There's a whole lotta silliness going on here as we weave back and forth from frothy sex scenes to plodding dialog. The small dusty town seems to have no air conditioners as everyone is hot and sweaty and miserable, as was I. Ted Danson as a flitting jewish lawyer (with a black hair piece), Mickey Rourke as a bomb expert who sings along with Bob Seger on the radio, and even Richard Crenna himself when he enters forty minutes in cannot save this overlong, tedious film.

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES

title: DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
year: 1962
cast: Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Jack Klugman
director: Blake Edwards
rating: ***

Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick play a good looking young couple who meet, get married, and then become hopeless drunks, especially Remick who doesn't want to change no matter what. Not bad directing by Blake Edwards and the acting is decent, although it tends to get extremely hammy. And it's funny seeing Jack Lemmon on screen with Jack Klugman, the original "Felix Unger" with the TV "Oscar Madison", but they're not such an odd couple as one is a drunk and the other a recovering drunk/AA sponser, which is what this movie turns out to be: a searing two hour ad for Alcoholics Anonymous.

THE BETSY

title: THE BETSY

year: 1978

cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Lawrence Olivier, Kathleen Beller, Robert Duvall

rating: **1/2

Like something off TV from the late seventies/early eighties night soaps ala "Dallas" or "Dynasty" but centering on a car company and with curse words and full-frontal nudity (the Kathleen Beller pool scene is quite a nice surprise). Tommy Lee Jones is a race car driver/designer hired by a rich family to make a new affordable fuel efficiant car (named after Beller, his great-granddaughter, hence "The Betsy") and gets tangled in the web that always permeates the rich and powerful in literature and films. This is just fluff, but sometimes entertaining fluff. Robert Duvall is surprisingly dull as the somewhat villainous grandson of Lawrence Olivier, Olivier who plays wholeheartedly a Henry Ford meets Darth Vadar type matriarch of a powerful family that's falling apart at the seams. When Duvall's character says (pp) "The U.S. Senate cannot dictate the American People's tastes in cars", I got a chill in my bones... Harold Robbins must have some Nostrodomus in him (hint... GM).