Movie Weekend!

This weekend was full of movies for me.  Well, three movies to be exact.  Saturday night I indulged myself with a movie I had DVRed: Night Nurse with Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Blondell and Clark Gable.  Then on Sunday night, my husband Landon and I joined the rest of the world when we watched The Hangover.  Today (an oh-so-glorious day off), we went to see The Lovely Bones in the theater.  I thoroughly enjoyed all three of them.  I'll have reviews to come!

I Was a Male War Bride

I Was a Male War Bride (1949) A
 
Directed by: Howard Hawks
 
Cast includes: Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan
 
Black-and-White, Romance, Screwball Comedy
 
Cary Grant is at his comic best opposite Ann Sheridan who is definitely able to stand up to Grant. Grant plays Henri Rochard, a member of the French Army whose escapades with WAC officer Catherine (Sheridan) forms an unlikely marriage. The story then follows Grant as he tries to follow his new wife to the U.S. as a male “war bride.” I Was a Male War Bride is a perfect example of director Howard Hawks’ fast-paced dialogue for which Grant was made. Sheridan is wonderful as the woman who can take the heat and give it right back. You’ll never know how ugly a woman Cary Grant makes until you’ve seen him in this movie. Hilarious and one of my favorite comedies!

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) C
 
Directed by: Terry Gilliam
 
Cast includes: Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Heath Ledger, Vern Troyer, Andrew Garfield, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell.
 
Drama, Comedy, Fantasy, Color
 
To say that this was an odd movie would be an understatement. My husband and I wanted to see this film for one reason only: This is the movie Heath Ledger was filming at the time of his death. The filmmakers handled his departure from the production very well by using Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell to play Ledger’s character inside the imaginarium.
 
Let me back up a bit. The premise of the movie is something like this: Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) makes a deal with the devil to become immortal. A thousand years later he falls in love with a woman and makes another deal with the devil to remain youthful in order to woo the woman with whom he’s fallen in love. Dr. Parnassus’ end of the bargain is that he must give the devil, known as Mr. Nick in this movie, his child on their 16th birthday. So, we meet Dr. Parnassus and his daughter, Valentina (Cole), a few weeks before her 16th birthday as they work their side-show magic on the people of London. Dr. Parnassus, now 1000 years old in the 21st Century, has the power to bring people into his mind and see into their imagination; this is what they call the imaginarium. He and Mr. Nick have a game they play inside the imaginarium to see whether people will choose a life of evil and darkness (Mr. Nick) or the life of good and self-sacrifice (Dr. Parnassus). In an attempt at one last gamble with Dr. Parnassus, Mr. Nick proposed that the first one to win five souls can keep Valentina, but they only have 2 days to do it.
 
Are you confused yet? Because I am and I haven’t even begun to tell you about the other characters involved in the story. Somehow Percy (Troyer) also obtained immortality and takes part in Dr. Parnassus’ Imaginarium side show. Also involved in the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is Anton (Garfield), a young performer as dedicated as the others to winning souls for the good of humanity who also has a heart for Valentina. The gang stumbles upon Tony (Ledger) one night as he is hanging off a bridge, literally. It seems Tony has gotten himself into a bit of trouble with a group of Russians and is implicated in a well-known charity scam. He pretends to have lost his memory after they save him from the noose so that he can hide out.
 
There is so much going on in the convoluted plot that it can sometimes be hard to keep up with everything. Unfortunately it also means the characters are not well-developed and I’m left wondering why on earth I should care what happens to these characters. Perhaps there was a bit left on the editing room floor, so to speak? Or maybe the scrip itself didn’t lend itself to much character development. The imaginarium scenes were trippy, to say the least, but had great special effects. I enjoyed the performances by Ledger, Cole and Garfield. I do have to admit that producer/director Gilliam cleverly integrated the performances by Depp, Law and Farrell after Ledger’s death left scenes unshot. There was one shot of Depp outside of the imaginarium that was too obvious and did not belong. He did most resemble Ledger, but the shot would have worked just as well from behind.
 
This is the kind of movie that may very well develop a cult following and someday become a cult classic. For me, there were too many holes, too much plot, and not enough character. It had its moments of drama and comedy, but not enough to carry the movie.

The Sheik

The Sheik (1921) A

Directed by: George Melford

Cast includes: Rudolph Valentino, Agnes Ayres

Black-and-White, Silent, Romance, Adventure

It’s easy to see why women fainted at the sight of Valentino in this film, his first. Even under the robes his masculinity bulges through. The story follows an independent young woman (Ayres) who is captured by a desert Prince (Valentino) during her holiday. At first she is frightened and repulsed by his obvious intentions, but through the help of a westernized friend of the prince, she finds that the prince isn’t really an Arabian prince, but a white orphan who was adopted when his parents died by the former prince. He was educated in Europe. She begins to fall in love with him and when she is captured by a rival leader, Valentino saves her in a climactic and highly romantic ending.

It is unfortunate that the love story between the two main characters can only be sanctioned after we discover that the prince is not an Arabic man but a white man raised by an Arabic prince. If you can look past the dated opinions of interracial relationships, you will find a gem of a film. The DVD has some great music which attempts to recreate the possible music played during the original release of the film. A true classic and a must see.

Diabolique (Les Diaboliques) (1955)

A+

One cold morning this week I was sick and couldn’t sleep. After spending an hour and a half tossing and turning, I decided to go to my couch and watch a movie I had on my DVR. I thought I would watch a little TV to help me fall asleep. Unfortunately for my need to sleep, but fortunately for my movie-loving heart, the movie I chose was Diabolique . I have a lot of unwatched movies on my DVR and this was the oldest and getting close to being deleted.

I did not know anything about this movie before watching it except the premise. A man’s wife and his mistress plot his murder. As the film begins, I quickly see why the two women would desire this man’s demise. Michel Delassalle, the headmaster of the school Institution Delassalle, is abusive both physically and verbally to the women. We first see Nicole Horner, his mistress and teacher at the school for boys, wearing a pair of sunglasses to hide her latest gift from Delassalle. At dinner that night he forces his wife Christina to eat the bad fish he has served to all the children in order to set a good example for everyone else. You see the pain and torment across her face as he pushes her to eat it.

Nicole and Christina decide that night to go on with their plans to murder Michel. The plan seems perfect down to every detail. They drown him in Nicole’s bath tub in another town and bring him back to the school to dump his body in the murky swimming pool. I watched in suspense as several times, the body is nearly discovered. Because of his reputation with women, none of the other teachers, or students (who seem to know too much about their headmaster’s private life), find it odd that Michel does not return right away after the holiday. The next few days nearly drive Christina out of her mind as she waits for the body to be discovered. Nicole, the strong authoritative one, decides to shorten the waiting process by accidentally dropping Christina’s keys to the school into the pool. When a student is unable to find the keys at the bottom of the pool, Christina is forced to order the pool drained. We watch her unravel as the pool is drained just outside her classroom’s window, only to discover there is no body there.

This is where the movie begins to take on its twists and turns. As the women are seemingly haunted by the body’s whereabouts by several events, Christina’s health declines and Nicole seems to grow stronger.

Diabolique is a movie wonderfully acted by Paul Meurisse (Michel), Vera Clouzot (Christina), and Simone Signoret (Nicole) who all turn out thoroughly convincing performances. Henri-Georges Clouzot directs this film to its brilliant finish with possibly the most suspenseful ten minutes on film. With its black-and-white cinematography, the film is a shining, or more perhaps more appropriately shadowy, example of a film noir classic. If you see the ending coming it is only because of the influence that this film has had on many films that followed. Watch Diabolique and you won’t regret it!

Reviewed January 6, 2010

A Film Lover's Dream

In an attempt to find a "creative" outlet for my love of all things movies, I have decided to create this blog. I am a former film student, current film lover, but by no means a professional in the film industry, or a writer for that matter. The views expressed in these posts are solely my opinion and I realize they may not coincide with yours.  Feel free to make comments!  To help me start out and get into the swing of things I will start out with and mix in some reviews I have written years ago.  Who knows, this walk down memory lane for me may make want to re-watch some films and reconsider my former opinions.  I hope you enjoy.