Gideon58's Reviews

THE PRODUCERS (1967)
The recent passing of Gene Wilder gave 1967's The Producers a serious bump up on my watchlist. Mel Brooks was the creative genius behind this deft and twisted look at one of my favorite movie themes: the business of show business. This movie put Brooks and Gene Wilder on the map and, to date, won Mel Brooks his only Oscar for his razor sharp, bordering on offensive, screenplay. But, of course, if it wasn't bordering on offensive, it wouldn't be Mel Brooks.

This is the story of Max Bialystock, a third rate Broadway producer who raises money for his productions by having sex with little old ladies in exchange for fat "checkies". A nebbish accountant named Leo Bloom, a bundle of neuroses who carries a blue security blanket a la Linus Van Pelt has been sent to Max's office to do his books and plants the idea in Max's head that he can make more money producing a Broadway flop rather than a hit by collecting more money that the show requires, selling over 100% of the share of the profits, producing a show that flops and than taking off to Rio with the money because if the show flops, they don't have to pay back investors.

Max and Leo then search out the worst play they can find, a travesty called "Springtime for Hitler, hire the worst director in New York to direct, but they mess up when the hip young actor they hire to play Hitler comes on in the second act and makes the show the biggest hit on Broadway.

This movie works because Mel Brooks trusts in the strength of his story, which is rock solid and everything that he surrounds his story with is there for one purpose and one purpose only...to serve Brook's vision as a writer and director. Brooks lets his story unfold slowly and allows us time to understand the two central characters...one of my favorite parts of the film is after Max has planted the idea in Leo's head but is still hesitant. Max takes Leo out to lunch in an effort to "seduce" him into making this nefarious plan a reality. I love the way Max very discreetly but effectively convinces Leo that he hates his life and wants something more, all set against some breathtaking backdrops of Manhattan.

Needless to say Brooks served his story in some very unconventional casting for a 1967 film. Zero Mostel, an actor known primarily as a Broadway star (he won a Tony for creating the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof), but pretty much an unknown outside of the New York theater crowd, was a risky choice for Brooks to trust a leading role in a big budget studio film, but it paid off. Mostel delivers one of the 1960's greasiest movie characters who provides consistent laughs...you can just see the oil dripping off this guy. Mostel was an actor known to do a lot of improvising but Brooks keeps him reined in thanks to the confines of the character and Gene Wilder's sometimes totally unhinged Leo Bloom is just a joy to watch. Wilder makes such unconventional acting choices here that gives Leo a layer of unpredictability that is just intoxicating.

The film also features first rate support from Christopher Hewitt as the director of the play, Andréas Voutsinas as his assistant/lover, Kenneth Mars as the author of the play, and especially Dick Shawn, the actor hired to play Hitler. If you blink, you might miss cameos from future stars Renee Taylor, Barney Martin and William Hickey. The film is rich with imaginative set pieces and the production number,"Springtime for Hitler" has become a classic within itself.

Brooks decided to revamp the piece into a Broadway musical that Brooks wrote the score for and premiered in 2001, won 11 Tony Awards, and ran for over 2500 performances. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick played Max and Leo in the musical, respectively and reprised their roles in the 2005 film version, which I also enjoyed, but the 2005 film suffers due to the fact that Brooks didn't direct the film. Mel Brooks works best on his own and from behind the camera and this 1967 classic is proof of that. Everything in the musical is just a rehash of Mel Brooks' caustic and brilliant original.

I liked both versions of The Producers, but I agree that the 1967 version is the better version. However they are very different movies. The 1967 version is a comedy with some music, but the 2005 version is more of a musical comedy. People who don't like musicals will probably like the original version, but probably won't like the 2005 version.

You can read my review of both versions here.

__________________
.
If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.

I like both versions too, but like I said, this one works better than the musical because Brooks directed it. Susan Stroman directed the musical version and directed it on Broadway as well and I think therein the difference lies...Brooks' very special directorial stylings are missing from the 2005 version.

HELLO, MY NAME IS DORIS

A dazzling, Oscar-worthy performance by Sally Field is the centerpiece of a quirky little 2015 character study called Hello My Name is Doris which puts a very unlikely character center stage in some almost unbelievable situations that we willingly accept because this lead character is such a charmer.

Doris Miller is a middle-aged data entry operator who dresses like a bag lady on crack and after recovering from her mother's death, is trying to move on with her life even though her brother and sister-in-law want her to move out of Mom's house so that they can sell it, which leads to another reveal about Doris which she is in denial about: Doris is a hoarder, the house is filled to the brim with junk and Doris has agreed to seeing a therapist about it. In the midst of all this, Doris finds herself instantly attracted to a new, much younger co-worker named John, whose friendship she mistakes for mutual attraction.

Director and co-screenwriter Michael Showalter has created an intoxicating story centered around a character who is given vibrant and effervescent life by one of the industry's best actresses. After half a century in the business, Field shows she still knows how to command a movie screen...her Doris makes you laugh, cry, but most of all, you want to protect her from the pain that the story seems to pushing her towards. We can see from her first few encounters with John that her feelings for him are slipping quietly into the area of obsession when she starts attending electric rock band concerts and creating false Facebook profiles with the aid of her granddaughter. We know there is no possible way John can return Doris' feelings and we're scared to watch the fall she's about to take. We worry when she meets John's girlfriend but she ends up bonding with her too.

Showalter has a keen directorial eye that sucks the viewer into believing one thing when something else is happening. His respect for Field and her talent is evident, trusting her instincts as an actress to meld with his directorial vision. Field works surprisingly well with Max Greenfield, known to TV audiences as Schmidt on Fox's New Girl, in his first major screen role as John...Greenfield brings the same sexy, sensitive, metrosexual quality to this character that he does to Schmidt. You understand Doris' attraction to this guy. There is an impressive supporting cast including Peter Gallagher as a motivational speaker who motivates Doris to pursue John, Stephen Root as her brother, Wendie McLendon Hovey as her bitchy sister-in-law, and especially Tyne Daly as Doris' BFF. A very special motion picture experience where a bittersweet experience for our heroine actually makes her stronger instead of destroying her.

Loved your review of Hello Doris, I agree with your opinion of it. It's a charmer!

THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS

A fact-based Broadway musical called The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas raised eyebrows in 1978 with its raunchy telling of an adult story of political and media pressure that forced the closing of a famous Texas house of prostitution. The musical was brought to the big screen in 1982, cleaned up in the same way Grease was cleaned up for the screen, but still an entertaining diversion, especially if you never saw it onstage.

This is the story of The Chicken Ranch, a famous whorehouse on the outskirts of Gilbert Texas that has been open to the public since 1910, earning its name during the Depression when money was scarce and gentlemen paid for their services with poultry. The establishment is now run by the effervescent and big-hearted Miss Mona (Dolly Parton) who has been having a quiet backstreet affair with the sheriff of Gilbert, Ed Earl Dodd (Burt Reynolds), who loves Miss Mona but bows to pressure to shut Miss Mona down when her business is exposed by a tight-assed TV activist named Melvin P. Thorpe (Dom DeLuise) who has declared the Chicken Ranch an illegal den of debauchery that should be shut down immediately.

Director Colin Higgins has taken a bawdy, adult musical and watered it down for general consumption, not to mention altering some of the facts. Though Miss Mona and Sheriff Ed Earl were real-life figures, they were not romantically involved in real life or in the stage musical this movie was based on, but the pairing of Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton onscreen for the first time demanded that the characters be involved and though the romance is acceptable here, it takes the focus away from the original purpose of the musical, the story of the Chicken Ranch and how it was destroyed by political and media pressure.

Fact altering for movies is nothing new, but the whole "cleaned up" look of the story is what hurts it a little...this is the cleanest, neatest, most colorful and proper whorehouse ever presented in a movie which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it was not the intent of the creators of the original Broadway musical, but how many Broadway musicals have come to the screen completely intact?

Burt Reynolds really seems to be phoning it in here with a performance that is just kind of empty, but Parton is a delight, absolutely lighting up the screen as Miss Mona. Dom DeLuise also scores as Melvin Thorpe, as does Charles Durning, who actually received an Oscar nomination for his showstopping turn as the Governor of Texas, which is basically a dazzling musical number called "The Sidestep."

Carol Hall's original toe-tapping score has been tampered with, but we still have "A Little Bitty Piss Ant Country Place", "Texas Has a Whorehouse in it", "Hard Candy Christmas", and "The Aggie Song". Two songs were added to the score just for the movie, written by Parton...a duet called "Sneakin' Around" for her and Reynolds and a little something you might have heard of called "I Will Always Love You." The musical numbers are well-staged, featuring some athletic choreography by Tony Stevens. It's an entertaining couple of hours, though considering the subject matter, a little antiseptic.

CINDERELLA (1950)

The Disney studios had one of their biggest hits with Cinderella, the colorful and entertaining animated retelling of the classic fairytale that features a lot of the staples that we expect from a Disney film, some still working to enormous effect and some not so much, but it's still a pleasurable animated diversion that even motivated this old man to smile and chuckle throughout.

For those who have lived under a rock for the past century, a long time ago in a kingdom far away, Cinderella is the daughter of a wealthy widower who remarries to provide his daughter with a mother figure, but when her father dies, the stepmother (who has two daughters of her own) shows her true colors (black and evil), takes over the house turning Cinderella into a servant in her own house. Meanwhile, the King has decided to throw a ball to welcome his son, the Prince, home and intends for his son to find a bride at said event and sends invitations commanding that all available maidens attend the ball. The Stepmother sees this as a path to Easy Street for her and her daughters and does whatever she can to keep Cinderella from attending.

Now this is story enough for a movie, but this is Disney we're talking about so embellishing the classic good vs evil story is comic relief, in the form of animals, who either speak or understand English and do what they can to help or hinder our heroine. In Cinderella's corner are a group of mice, led by Jaq and Gus, who when they learn about the ball, immediately do a rehab on the dress Cinderella plans to wear, right before her ugly stepsisters destroy it. Getting in Cinderella's way throughout the story is an arrogant and obnoxious cat named Lucifer, who has attitude for days and adores the evil stepmother until she suggests that Lucifer needs a bath.

And as far as good and evil is concerned, the lines are clearly and beautifully drawn in the central characters...Cinderella (beautifully voiced by Ilene Woods) is pure and kind and everything you want from a heroine and the evil Stepmother (brilliantly voiced by Eleanor Audley) just drips evil...I love the first confrontation between these two characters where Cinderella enters Stepmother's room and the camera sweeps to her bed and we first see nothing, then Lucifer's bright green eyes, and then Stepmother, with a bone-chilling smile on her face.

The film features a handful of nice songs too, including "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes". "Sing Sweet Nightingale", "So This is Love", and "Bippity Boppity Boo", which received an Oscar nomination for Best Song.

In this computer generated age of filmmaking, it was so refreshing that I could find genuine entertainment from an animated film that is over 60 years old, but that's exactly what I found and I still think that, even in this day and age, 5-10 year old girls will still be enchanted by this.

VERTIGO

I am hesitant as I sit down to write about my very first viewing of the film that many buffs consider Hitchcock's masterpiece and there is a whole lot of love for it on these boards. Still processing in my head what I've just watched because I want to be fair to a film that is considered a classic. And to be completely fair, it should be noted that this review is coming from someone who is not a huge fan of Hitchcock or Jimmy Stewart and someone who has never been able to stomach Kim Novak. With that said, I feel comfortable in stating that watching this movie was alternately riveting and aggravating, but never boring and never had me looking at my watch, right up to a somewhat predictable ending after a couple of hours of head-scratching entertainment.

It is 1954 San Francisco where we meet John Ferguson, a police detective with a crippling fear of heights, who had to retire because of it, who is coaxed out of retirement by an old friend who wants John to tail his wife, who he suspects has been possessed by the spirit of another woman. John tentatively agrees to follow the woman and begins seeing the connection between this woman named Madeline and a dead woman named Carlotta, which reaches a disturbing level for John when he witnesses Madeline jump into the San Francisco Bay. John eventually finds himself becoming obsessed with his friend's wife, which his BFF Midge who wants to be more is not to thrilled about either.

The master, Alfred Hitchcock, has given us a psychological thriller that is somewhat pedestrian in some places and spellbinding in others, and used his own unparalleled skill in cinematic storytelling in keeping us in suspense regarding what we think is happening is and what is REALLY happening...Hitchcock and screenwriter Samuel Taylor sprinkle this story with just enough red herrings to slightly confuse the viewer, but never enough to make us give up on the story, and believe me, I have no qualms about giving up on a story that is too confusing, but despite the bizarre twists and turns this story take, especially during the final third, I not only couldn't take my eyes off the screen, I found myself talking back to the movie, a sure sign of a movie that has gotten me.

Hitchcock has provided a story with two central characters who I felt every specifically about at the beginning of the story but by the end of the story, I felt exactly the opposite about them. The character who was initially sympathetic to me had the hair on the back of my neck standing up and the initial villain of the piece had a symbolic noose tightening around her neck as the story wound to an unspectacular conclusion, but up until then, it was a helluva ride.

James Stewart gives one of his best performances here. I would rate it right up with my favorite (Anatomy of a Murder) and Kim Novak gives the closest thing to a performance I have ever seen. I guess it shows what an A List director can do with a bad actress. Also LOVED the stylish supporting turn by Barbara Bel Geddes as Midge. Bernard Herrmann's score is a little overbearing, but I did not allow it to get in the way of enjoying what is, yes, an amazing piece of cinema that did live up to its reputation.

I haven't seen it yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing Hello, My Name is Doris. I usually like Sally Field in just about anything she's in, and it sounds like my kind of movie. (Plus, I'm a hoarder too, so I might be able to relate to her character. )

Watch it GBG, I think you'll like it, and if you're a hoarder you'll understand the 'intervention' scene where her brother and sister in law want her to get rid of all of her stuff. Just image if someone told you, you had to get rid off everything you own! It was a well done scene and I agree with Gideon a great movie. I really liked it.

I saw The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas back when it was released, and all I really remember about it was that despite a cast of actors who I like, the movie was pretty bad. I thought the only one worth watching in the whole movie was Charles Durning.

It's already on my watchlist. Someday I might actually catch up to current movies, but if not, I'll probably see it within the next couple of years.

In my world, a hoarder is called a "collector", so I don't have to get rid of everything because it's collectible, and it will go up in value the longer I keep it.

I kind of thought of you as a collector. But Doris is a hoarder! In the movie it's funny in a way, but a bit sad too, well you'll have to watch it.

Cinderella is a wonderful movie, and if you haven't seen them, there are several old live action versions that are worth watching. Specifically, the 1957 version starring Julie Andrews, and the 1965 version starring Lesley Ann Warren.

I will definitely watch it. It just might take me a while to get to it, (unless it's out on DVD on Black Friday and someone has it on sale. )

I'm glad you liked Vertigo. It's not my favorite Hitchcock movie, but it's one of his best movies. (I grew up watching Hitchcock's movies, so I can't imagine anyone not being a fan of Hitchcock.)

I watched the Lesley Ann Warren version every year on CBS for about ten years when they would broadcast it annually like The Wizard of Oz. I saw the Julie Andrews version a couple of years ago...a lot of people don't know Andrews originated that role. I even saw the remake with Brandy and Whitney Houston. There is also a version of the story from the mid 50's called The Glass Slipper with Leslie Caron playing Cinderella that I also loved.

I watched the Julie Andrews 1950s teleplay version of Cinderella, it's well worth watching.

EVERYTHING MUST GO
An original look at some classic movie themes, anchored by a powerhouse lead performance from an unexpected source make 2010's Everything Must Go worth your time. A prickly and sometimes unsettling story that, considering the initial set-up and the star of the film, provides nothing that we expect, but pays off with vivid entertainment that never defies logic or realism.

Will Ferrell stars as Nick Halsey, an alcoholic business executive who is let go from his job after 16 years and comes home to find the locks on his house and garage changed and everything he owns all over his front yard. In the next 24 hours, Nick has been blocked access to his bank accounts, his cell phone has been cut off, and his car is repossessed. Nick's AA sponsor, a police detective, keeps Nick from being arrested by arranging a permit for him that says he is conducting yard sale that buys Nick three days until he can figure out what to do.

It is during these three days that Nick manages to actually connect with two very different people who accidentally drift into his life. Samantha is a pregnant, across the street neighbor who has just moved in and still awaiting the arrival of her husband. Kenny Loftus is an overweight latch key kid who actually witnessed his wife having the locks changed and throwing his stuff out, who actually agrees to help Nick with his yard.

When I first heard about this film and was informed who was the star, I expected a manic slapstick comedy about a guy living on his front lawn and there is nothing manic or comic about what happens in this story. What happens to the character of Nick Halsey is pretty much a nightmare and the initial laughs provided are nervous ones. As nightmarish as this man's plight is, every time he takes a drink, you have to wonder if he hasn't gotten exactly what's coming to him. Alcoholism has consequences and what we see here is the consequences of Nick's alcoholic behavior and the behavior itself is restricted to backstory and as to whether what Nick's wife was justified, that is for the individual viewer to decide.

Rivaling his work in Stranger than Fiction, Ferrell delivers a powerhouse movie-star performance that commands the screen, never strains credibility, and buries any image of the movie clown to which we've become accustomed. Ferrell's Nick is not a black and white character and Ferrell, with the aid of director and co-screenwriter Dan Rush, doesn't shy away from the negative aspects of the character. The scene where he is refused credit for a six pack and stands in front of the store begging for a beer is heartbreaking. Rebecca Hall establishes a nice chemistry with Ferrell as Samantha as does Christopher Jordan Wallace as young Kenny. Michael Pena is also quite effective as Nick's sponsor. There's also a lovely cameo by Laura Dern as an old high school classmate that sort of comes out of nowhere but serves the story.

I also love the fact that we never meet Nick's wife, Catherine...it gives the story so much more power. Bouquets to the art direction and editing teams and I loved David Torn's music. A surprisingly unique look at the horror of addiction, from a surprisingly refreshing angle.

UNCLE BUCK

John Hughes and John Candy once again struck gold as a movie making team with a 1989 comedy called Uncle Buck, that makes a pretty standard story special due to some deft screenwriting and Candy's ability to bring more to a role than what's on the paper.

Candy plays Buck Russell, a confirmed bachelor, an unemployed chronic gambler who steps up when he gets a call from his brother asking if he can look after hie nieces and nephew. Buck is not his sister-in-law's first choice for this job made clear by the fact that the two younger children didn't even know they had an Uncle. The story eventually whittles down to a battle of wills between Buck and his mean-spirited older niece (Jean Louisa Kelly).

What I like that John Hughes did here is establish the kind of person the central character is through other characters and events in the story. The kids' mother only agreeing to call Buck when ALL other options have been exhausted, the look of terror on her face as she is giving Buck final instructions before they leave town, and on the other side of Buck, we see his sometimes girlfriend (Amy Madigan) who he is supposed to start working for, ask him about 47 times in their first scene nif he is going to show up for work for his first day. The wonderful twist here is the way Buck steps up and takes this responsibility so seriously but never stops being Buck.

Hughes creates a perfect marriage of actor and character with Candy and Buck, one of Candy's more likable characters, who actually has a little more substance than you might think. Kelly is a little too straight-faced as the niece, but Macauley Culkin is a scene-stealer in a performance that led to his star-making role in Home Alone. Madigan is wasted bu Laurie Metcalf has some funny moments as an amorous neighbor with the hots for Buck. Once again, the two Johns, Hughes and Candy, make an unbeatable combination.