by ·Comments Off on Ball of Fire (1941, Howard Hawks)

Felt slightly long and slow and full of old men for a Hawks movie. Gary Cooper is a hunky young encyclopedia writer locked in a house with his coworkers (including “Cuddles” Sakall). Barbara Stanwyck is the ball of fire who hides out with them on the pretense of helping with an entry on slang, hiding out from her gangster boyfriend (young Dana Andrews, star of one of my least-favorite Fritz Lang movies).

Mostly fun to watch for the language. Written by Billy Wilder and Lubitsch vet/future Sunset Blvd. collaborator Charles Brackett. Same cinematographer as Citizen Kane, the same year. Remade in ’48 with Danny Kaye in the Gary Cooper part, Virginia Mayo as Barbara Stanwyck and Louis Armstrong as Cuddles Sakall.

The internet likes to say the encyclopedaeists were inspired by Snow White’s seven dwarfs, and so here’s me on the internet faithfully repeating it.

by ·Comments Off on The Road (2009, John Hillcoat)

Based on the bestest-selling novel which everyone in the world has now read. I’d heard it would be relentlessly bleak, and so that’s what it was. Hillcoat and Nick Cave and Viggo Mortensen and Javier Aguirresarobe (also cinematographer of Talk To Her, The Dream of Light, the Twilight saga) and Charlize Theron and the boy all did terrific jobs, first-rate, award-deserving and everything else.

But it’s kinda like Polanski’s The Pianist… a perfectly-made film in service of the most depressing story ever. One person survives a (nuclear/nazi) holocaust, and while that’s somewhat encouraging, the movie spends its runtime rubbing your nose in the terrible enormity of said holocaust making for a mega-bummer experience. If a great movie makes you feel crappy for having seen it, is it still a great movie?

I suppose Theron is only alive in flashback. She doesn’t have the survival instinct of her husband, just wants to kill her son and herself peacefully before cannibals catch them or they starve to death. Viggo won’t agree, so she wanders out into the cold alone. Viggo goes from being the only honest man in the world, protective and generous to his son, ruthless in his survival, to seeming slightly savage, giving a thief a death sentence, unable to ever trust anyone. When he dies from cold & sickness, the son is immediately picked up by Guy Pearce and family, and you get the feeling that he’s better off. Robert Duvall is unrecognizable as a decrepit man who may not be as feeble as he lets on. Viggo gets shot by an arrow, discovers a hidden food bunker, avoids cannibal camps, shoots a guy in the head – it’s hardly Children of Men as far as slam-bang action but it’s creepier as far as apocalyptic atmosphere.

by ·Comments Off on Robin Hood (1973, Wolfgang Reitherman)

Cute movie, actually one of my favorite Disney cartoons. That’s probably because I first saw it when I still liked Disney movies (age 10-ish) and didn’t see it again when I was sick of them (age 12-20). Watched it this time because I’ve been listening to Roger Miller albums on repeat all autumn and I never realized he played the troubadour narrator rooster and contributed songs to this movie. Miller has three original songs, Johnny Mercer wrote one, then there was a crappy love ballad which of course is the one that got oscar-nominated (and easily beaten by “The Way We Were”).

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I thought Robin and Little John had a fight on a log but that must’ve been the Errol Flynn version. And I was expecting King Richard’s appearance at the end to be dramatic, a la Sean Connery in Prince of Thieves or Patrick Stewart in Men in Tights, but his scene got deleted for being frightening to children, so he only appears in epilogue. Lots of talk of death and hangings for a kids movie.

Director Wolfgang was a Disney animation lifer, from early 30’s shorts through feaures in the late 70’s. Robin is Brian Bedford (Grand Prix) – he doesn’t get his name on the poster like Tom Hanks in Toy Story. Former bandleader Phil Harris as Little John sounds annoyingly close to his Baloo. Andy Devine (Friar Tuck) was in Stagecoach and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Monica Evans was in The Odd Couple, abruptly disappeared from the movies after voicing Maid Marian. Pat Buttram (heh), a western actor in the early 50’s, has the most memorable voice in the movie as the Sheriff. The oft-awarded Peter Ustinov (Lola Montes, Spartacus, Logan’s Run) is the prince (and the king) and famously gap-toothed comic Terry-Thomas (Danger: Diabolik, Bachelor Flat) is his snake assistant.