Gideon58's Reviews

THE TENDER TRAP
Despite some dated ideas about dating and relationships, the 1955 romantic comedy The Tender Trap is still sparkling adult entertainment thanks to a proven rom-com premise and some terrific performances.

Charlie Y. Reader (Frank Sinatra) is a theatrical agent and confirmed bachelor who lives in an elegant Manhattan penthouse complete with hot and cold running women, parading in and out of the place 24/7 much to the shock and jealousy of Charlie's best friend, Joe (David Wayne), who has come to New York from Indianapolis after leaving his wife. Joe finds himself attracted to Sylvia (Celeste Holm), who only has eyes for Charlie.

Enter Julie Gillis (Debbie Reyolds), a young wannabe actress who gets cast in a show that Charlie is involved in, but acting is just a time-filler for Julie. Julie wants to be a wife and a mother and knows exactly what kind of man she wants, how many children she wants, and where they will all live and won't even sign a run of the play contract for the show because she's afraid show business might interfere with her plan, but that's nothing compared to the fight she has to put up to keep Charlie at arm's length, who stands for everything that Julie is against.

Adapted from a stage play by Max Schulman and Robert Paul Smith, Julius J. Epstein's screenplay does contain some dated elements, but the screenplay does offer some surprising adult touches I really didn't see coming...the fact that Joe falls in love with Sylvia and actually proposes to her, even though he technically is still married, had to be a bit of an eye-opener in 55, not to mention the fact that Charlie actually proposes to two different women in a 24 hour period. We see from the opening frames, that Charlie is a player and in the beginning he claims to hate it, even though it's clear that he doesn't. Charlie does slimey things during the course of the story, but one thing I noticed is that he never actually lies to anyone, which I found refreshing for a romantic comedy.

Charlie is not in this alone though...none of these characters had time to polish their halos, they all make wrong moves at one point or another, causing some very tangled relationships, which has been the genesis for classic romantic comedy forever and though the characters do wrong, we see where it's coming from and we forgive.
Sinatra has rarely been as charming and sexy as he was here and Reynolds proved to be a surprisingly solid leading lady for him, despite their difference in age, which is addressed in the screenplay and they get brilliant support from Holm and Wayne in the second leads. Carolyn Jones and Lola Albreight are decorative as members of Charlie's harem and the film features a fantastic title song by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Husen that received an Oscar nomination for Best Song. Lovers of classic romantic comedy don't have to look any further than here for some silly sexy fun.

I liked The Tender Trap, and I think Frank Sinatra is great in the movie, and it's definitely worth watching, but the movie was very dated. It has a great theme song too.

OK you two What is dated about The Tender Trap?

Mainly the whole idea that she has to give up her career to find a husband and get married.

I took it that Debbie Reynolds provided comic relief as she was so silly in her planning out every detail of her life, that her character was improvable. In other words the film is lampooning her outdated notions of marriage, in the same way it lampoons Frank Sinatra's idea of stringing women along and being a commented bachelor... and the film even lampoons his married friends idea that he wants to cheat with Celeste Holme, even though he has a wonderful wife at home.

Only Celeste Holmes character had her head on straight. So the entire movie is an expose on the silliness of the characters views on marriage. And I way say it was very modern in that respect. I should put that into my review

It just felt dated to me, but that didn't affect my enjoyment of the movie.

I really liked that one too, even though I gave it a half popcorn lower than Gideon. Great film that I though had some intelligent dialogue.

WRITTEN ON THE WIND
Douglas Sirk, the King of 1950's melodrama, hit another bullseye with 1957's Written on the Wind, a soapy but extremely entertaining film that still works, despite some dated elements.

The film stars Robert Stack as Kyle Hadley, a wealthy alcoholic playboy who instantly falls for a secretary at his father's company (Lauren Bacall), who has also caught the eye of Kyle's best friend Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson), who is also the lifelong obsession of Kyle's trampy sister, MaryLee (Dorothy Malone).

Based on a novel by Robert Wilder, George Zuckerman's screenplay makes all the moves expected from melodrama in the 1950's...we have best friends torn apart by a woman, a man who thinks he can buy a woman's affections and learning that all the money in the world is ineffective next to a wedding ring and that obsession can drive people to destroying people they care about.

The primary quadrangle that makes up this story is constructed in a way that we know immediately there's no way things aren't going to get messy, but the slow reveal of how the destruction commences keeps us guessing and throws in a couple of curves we didn't see coming that during 1957, probably had some censors squirming, but probably attracted audience in droves as word of mouth spread.

There are some really interesting casting choices made here...Robert Stack probably had the most significant role of his movie career as the self-destructive Kyle and he makes the most of it, forcing Rock Hudson to underplay his role in order to make Stack's performance viable. I have to admit though, that as I watched this film, I couldn't help but think of how different this film might have been if Hudson and Stack had switched roles. Kyle reminded me a lot of Hudson's character in Magnifcient Obsession and I definitely could have seen it, but Stack was surprisingly solid. Lauren Bacall's stylish work brought a richness to her character that really wasn't in the screenplay and Dorothy Malone's delicious scenery chewing in the film's showiest role won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress of 1957. Malone's role required her to invest in some things that would be laughed off movie screens today, but in '57 audiences ate it up and so did the Academy.

Director Douglas Sirk proves once again that he understood the melodrama genre and the emotions that it is supposed to produce, giving the intended audience exactly what they wanted. If you like your soap against glamorous Ross Hunter-like-trappings, you will love this.

I assumed going in that Hudson would be playing the playboy.

Yeah right? Stack was OK, but I couldn't help picturing the roles being switched the whole time I was watching.

CREED
In my review of Grudge Match, I mentioned how the filmmakers effectively mined the history the characters created in the past to strengthen a contemporary story. This concept works to even greater extent in 2015's Creed, an elaborately directed drama which specifically mines the legacy of the Rocky franchise but from a different direction and comes up with gold, respecting the legacy being saluted and keeping the legacy untarnished but utilizing it for creating a credible story.

This film introduces us to Adonis Johnson, who turns out to be the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, a young man full of anger and apparently full of passion for the sport of boxing, which has him leaving a very cushy life in Los Angeles to move to Philadelphia in order to seek out his father's former nemesis, Rocky Balboa, so that he can train him. Adonis has been using his mother's name because he wanted to make it in the ring without trading on his father's name and, ironically, when he gets a shot at exactly what he wants, that is exactly what he has to do.

This multi-layered story has so much going on that at times it's hard to drink it all in and I found myself literally having to let certain things go and keep my eye on the prize, which is a compelling second generation story that once it grabs the viewer with its on target respect for the Rocky legend, grabs us almost immediately and never lets go.

It's really lovely as we watch Rocky and Adonis enter Mickey's old gym and as we watch Rocky use a lot of the training techniques on Adonis that Micky used on him...I have to admit I was a little disappointed that Rocky and Adonis didn't visit a meat locker but I guess that was covered in Grudge Match.

What I liked about Ryan Coogler and Aaron Covington's slightly padded screenplay is that it provides a new character for us to get behind connected to a proven legend, but unlike Rocky Balboa and Grudge Match, this story respects the fact that Rocky Balboa is no longer a kid and has no business stepping into the ring, instead he is in the corner of a young man with whom a connection inspires him to share his experience. The padding comes in the form of an underdeveloped romance for Johnson which just slows the film down.

Coogler as director also managed to pull a star-making performance from Michael B. Jordan in the title role and a powerhouse performance from Sylvester Stallone that restores the dignity the character was stripped of in Rocky Balboa and earned the actor a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. Phylicia Rashad even demands attention in her brief role as Adonis' mother, but this is really Stallone's show...a fitting last hurrah for the character he created some 40 years ago.

GONE BABY GONE

The kidnapping of a little girl named Amanda McCready is the genesis for a dark and unapologetic drama from 2007 called Gone Baby Gone that offers disturbing surprises at every turn, rich with unsympathetic characters involved in an ugly story that literally had my stomach tied in knots for most of the running time.

Set in the sleepy little hamlet of Dorchester, Massachusetts, we learn that Amanda has been missing for 36 hours and the police investigation seems to have stalled. Amanda's aunt (Amy Madigan) hires Patrick (Casey Affleck) and Angie (Michelle Monaghan), investigators specializing in missing persons to aid in the investigation. Amanda's mother (Amy Ryan) is a drug addict who has been working as a drug mule to support her habit and her actions may have been directly behind Amanda's disappearance, but this is only the beginning of one of the most bizarre criminal conspiracy involving addiction and police corruption. This is another one of those movies that is very difficult to review without major spoilers.

More than anything, this film is a triumph for director and co-screenwriter Ben Affleck, who has mounted a story of stark realism where nothing is as it seems, most of the characters have hidden agendas and are not necessarily likable...this is the first film centered around a kidnapping that I recall where absolutely NO sympathy is evoked for the victim's mother...this woman appears to love her daughter and takes responsibility for what happens on the surface, but when we first meet her, she seems blissfully unconcerned and the picture of a woman who has no business being a parent.

As I've mentioned in other reviews, actors turned directors seem to have a knack for getting great performances from their actors and this film is no exception. Ben puts a lot of trust in brother Casey in a complex role and he absolutely commands the screen here and works well with Monaghan, a relationship we are on board with as we meet them but this story tears them apart. Solid support is provided by Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, John Ashton, Titus Welliver, and especially Amy Ryan, in a gutsy and uncompromising performance that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

This film is not an easy watch, but it's worth the trouble and I promise that when you've finished watching this, if you're a parent, you will run immediately to your child and hug him forever.

WHATEVER WORKS

Woody Allen goes the "romantic comedy for people who hate romantic comedies" route with 2009's Whatever Works, a quirky and challenging comedy that provides solid entertainment, thanks to an extremely likable leading character who is absolutely not written that way and some interesting supporting characters who provide constant surprises.

Writer/comedian Larry David gets a shot at leading man status as Boris, the original grumpy old man, a former physicist and intellectual, who hates everyone and everything, angry at the world, and determined to inhabit it by himself...think Ebeneezer Scrooge without the money. Boris finds his life changed by Melody (Evan Rachel Wood), a runaway from Mississippi who Boris takes in and what begins as a Pygmalion kind of relationship actually morphs into a marriage.

Things get stickier with the arrival of Melody's mother (Patricia Clarkson), a contemporary reincarnation of Blanche DuBois, who tries to break up her daughter's marriage and discovers a new person inside of herself in the process.

As always, the real star of this film is the Woodmeister's script, which is angry and no-holds barred, offering unpopular opinions on every aspect of pop culture and politics that you can imagine, but also offers a relationship at the center of the storm that is just really hard to swallow...Melody's attraction to Boris is a mystery because other than a razor sharp mind, Boris has no redeeming qualities and actually marrying the man almost threw me off the film altogether. I was also troubled by the character of Melody herself...the character appears to be a total hayseed when we first meet her, but she soaks up everything Boris teachers her and remembers every single word that he ever taught her, even if she doesn't always remember what it means.

We've seen a lot of actors channel Woody over the years and some worked better than others (John Cusack in Bullets Over Broadway and Kenneth Branaugh in Celebrity were standouts), but no one did it better than Larry David does here...David is comfortable with this unappealing character and his performance alone makes this film worth investing in. He especially seems to enjoy when Woody allows him to break the fourth wall and talk to directly to the camera, a technique which is not groundbreaking but leave it to Woody to take it to another level and let us all in on the joke. Wood is a talented actress but the inconsistencies in her character made it difficult to invest in her performance, but I loved Patricia Clarkson as her mother, a character who goes through an entertaining transformation, another staple of Woody's writing, one character who goes through a significant change and Clarkson appears to be having a ball.

Woody's attention to production values is flawless as always...special nod to the set designer (Boris' apartment is awesome) and cinematographer Harris Savides photographs Woody's beloved New York with loving care and of course the music is wonderful, have always loved Woody's ear for music, but this movie is worth checking out for Woody's challenging script and direction and for his choice of a very unconventional leading man that pays off in spades.

I keep clicking on this thread hoping to find a review for either Quills or Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but so far no luck.

Nice review for Gone Baby Gone though.

__________________

OK, full disclosure...I have tried to watch Hedwig and the Angry Inch on 3 separate occasions now and I nodded off every time.

You've got company because I didn't like it the first time I saw it.

I don't wanna say you'll like it the more you see it... but that happened to me. Though, I think part of why it grew on me is because of nostalgic reasons. It was the first movie I really saw in an indie, arthouse theater. I was young and it was an experience. It was only a few weeks before 9/11. And now I see things in the movie that remind me of my own life. But there's still a part of me that UNDERSTANDS people who can't get into that movie. I remember being stunned by it - WTF am I watching?

That's a shame. I liked it a lot but didn't quite love it the first time I saw it, but obviously I love it now. The stage show's going on tour in October, kicking off with some dates in San Francisco, and I just may have to check it out if my budget and schedule allow.

I think I also read about a possible remake with Taye Diggs? Was I hallucinating that?

He did the stage show for awhile.



Neil Patrick Harris and Michael C. Hall have also done it. I believe Darren Criss is doing it now.

AWAKENINGS

Penny Marshall put herself on the map as a director with the 1988 comedy classic Big, but she created her masterpiece with 1990's Awakenings, a disturbing, powerful, challenging, and heartbreaking fact-based drama that takes a frighteningly realistic look at the challenges of mental illness, the gamble sometimes involved in psychotropic drugs, and the real power of love and friendship. This film stirred a myriad of emotions and found me fighting tears throughout.

Based on the book by Dr. Oliver Sachs, this film introduces us to Dr. Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams), a research physician who accepts a job at a mental facility in the Bronx in 1969 working with catatonic patients, despite the fact that he has never worked directly with patients before. Dealing up close and personal with actual people is virgin territory for Sayer, who is initially frightened by his patients but he does manage to find a common thread in the illness of a group of patients and reaches out to one in particular, a Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro), who has been in a catatonic state for over 30 years, but a new drug initiates an "awakening" in Leonard, which motivates Sayer to try the drug on the rest of the patients with the same condition, producing varied reactions.

Sayer develops a connection with Leonard and begins garnering respect from the rest of the hospital staff, but just as Leonard looks to be on the verge of resuming a normal life, he experiences a horrible backslide that is heartbreaking to watch as Sayer becomes consumed with guilt while Leonard just wants him to use what is happening to help other patients in the future.

I have referred to Marshall's direction as being over-indulgent in the past, but this is one example where her care and sensitivity to the story being told pays off in spades...Marshall allows this story to unfold in layers and gives us insightful looks into these characters. She shows through flashback what happened to Leonard and then through a look at his home life, how Sayer is the last person who should be able to help him...love when they show Sayer open his refrigerator at home and there's nothing in it but plants for his research. Marshall lets the camera pan over a variety of patients in the facility and gives us a complete sense of how varied yet unique mental illness can be and the 50/50 gamble where a possible cure is concerned.

Steven Zaillian's screenplay is intelligent and uncompromising, offering no easy answers to the story and Marshall respects the story, making it sure it always remains center stage. Marshall is also to be applauded for the startling work she has pulled from her clearly hand-picked cast, who deliver the goods...Robert DeNiro's intense and heartbreaking Leonard earned him an Oscar nomination and Williams beautifully underplays as Sayer, allowing De Niro's character to roar, as it should. Mention should also be made of Julie Kavner as Sayer's loyal assistant, Eleanor, John Heard as an administrative thorn in Sayer's side, similar to his role in Big, Ruth Nelson as Leonard's mother and a handful of veteran character actors doing controlled but effective work as Leonard's fellow patients, who are all given a chance to shine, with grand assists from Zaillian and Marshall.

This film is not an easy watch, and unless you're a heartless monster, some tears will be fought during this cinematic journey, but the journey is worth it and it's due mostly to the masterful work of director Penny Marshall.