Gideon58's Reviews

Kiss Me Stupid
Billy Wilder was the creative force behind a controversial mixed bag from 1964 called Kiss Me Stupid, a film rich with all the Wilder touches, including a surprisingly adult screenplay for the 60's.

Dean Martin basically plays an extension of himself, referred to here as Dino, who has left Las Vegas and is driving back to Hollywood but gets stranded in a one-horse town in Nevada called Climax, where he is ambushed by Orville Spooner (Ray Walton) a piano teacher and amateur songwriter and his lyricist, a gas station owner named Barney (Cliff Osmond) who want Dino to record one of the hundreds of songs they've written together.

Orville is married to a beautiful girl named Zelda (Felicia Farr) who Orville is convinced is constantly cheating on him, despite the fact that the story opens on their 5th anniversary. When Barney suggests that Dino spend the night at Orville's while he's in town, Dino insists on some female companionship so Orville sends Zelda away for the night and Barney gets a local good time gal named Polly (Kim Novak) to pretend to be Zelda and Orville actually finds himself pimping out his wife to sell a song.

Wilder and I A L Diamond, whose long and distinguished career as screenwriters includes classics like Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot, and The Apartment have come up with another comedy rich with sexual shenanigans that got the film limited play during its initial release due to what was considered rather risque subject matter and despite the on the surface titillation factor of the screenplay, this is a story rich with humor, warmth, pathos and some very funny dialogue.

I loved Wilder's concept of the character of Dino...it is Dean Martin, but it isn't really. The character of Dino is based on Martin, but it is sort of an exaggerated version of Martin's onscreen persona that doesn't always paint Martin in the most flattering light, but Martin doesn't shy away from it and he seems to be enjoying himself.

The real joy of this film is the brilliant comic performance by Ray Walston as Orville. Walston pretty much steals the show here as the paranoid cuckhold who has a wonderful epiphany about himself during the course of the story that is a joy to watch. Osmond is fun and Farr is absolutely charming as Zelda, but it is really the magic of Billy Wilder that makes this one shine. Thanks for the recommendation, Citizen.

Kevin Hart: I'm a Grown Little Man
Before he became a game show host and one of the busiest actors in Hollywood, Kevin Hart was making people laugh with his standup for years and one of his earliest efforts was a 2009 concert called Kevin Hart: I'm a Grown Little Man.

For those who know nothing about Kevin Hart, Hart is short and has never made any qualms about it and has based a lot of his comedy around it. It's been said that short people have a lot of resentment about being short but Hart has found a way to mine comic gold out of it.

Most of his material has sprung from or was created based on the fact that Hart is short and that, because of his size, he is not a tough guy or fighter and will do whatever he can do to get out of any situation that could in any way lead to a fight. His demonstration of his one fake fight move had me on the floor. He also tells a couple of stories about being with a friend during a possible fight situation in a club and not lifting a finger to help his friend and having no shame about it. His story of his uncle being knocked out cold at a barbecue was very funny.

Hart opens this show announcing the birth of his second child and how his kids are driving him crazy. His fight with his daughter over having juice instead of water and his son's bobbling head had the audience doubled over with laughter, as did his encounter with a giant Asian truck driver in a Best Buy parking lot with his mother in the car. He also does a fall down funny impression of a weightlifter in a gym who wants to make sure everyone in the gym is watching him before he lifts anything. Anyone who has ever worked out in a gym will recognize this guy. He also had the audience on the floor describing his first and only encounter with a very angry ostrich.

For a black comedian, Hart's material was refreshingly non-racial, though his impression of a white guy trying to tell him a joke was very funny. Of course, as most standups do, Hart offers his personal views on relationships, but he follows up each point he makes with a dead on recreation of the situations that he describes and the proper reaction in order to keep piece in said relationships. Hart is smart and funny and has a devastating smile that melts the audience. Like a lot of standups, he spends a little too much time laughing at himself, but for some reason, with this guy, you forgive and laugh with him.

Modern Romance
Albert Brooks takes an offbeat and occasionally unsettling look at male/female relationships in his 1981 comedy Modern Romance.

Brooks plays Robert, a film editor, who is observed as the story begins meeting with his girlfriend, Mary (Kathryn Harrold) in order to break up with her. Mary accepts the breakup and warns Robert to really leave her alone this time. We're not really sure what this means as Robert assures Mary that their relationship is over.

Needless to say, Robert is anything but over Mary. He is unable to work or think about anything else. He even makes a date with another girl, picks her up, drives her around the block and brings her right back home telling her that he's not ready to date someone new. Robert's persistence in getting Mary back does eventually pay off, but his time away from her has made him even more obsessed with her.

Brooks and screenwriter Monica Johnson have constructed a funny but slightly squirm-worthy story centered around a character whose sympathy factor changes from scene to scene. Robert comes off as sort of an ass in the opening scene when he breaks up with Mary, but we feel sorry for him minutes later when he is glimpsed in his apartment, high on quaaludes, unable to think about anything but Mary, we do feel bad for him. But his almost psychotic obsession with what Mary is doing and whom she is doing it with every minutes of the day becomes almost creepy at times.

The film does contain some absolutely delicious and perfectly human moments that we can all have dealt with and can relate to. I love the scene where he comes home to his apartment to wait for a phone call from Mary and everybody but Mary calls and he can't get them off the phone. When Robert finally does get that phone call that he's been waiting for, the sparkle in his eye is quite endearing and has you on his side again.

Brooks understands this character he has created and makes sure that the viewer stays on his side at all time despite behavior to the contrary. Harrold is a little wooden as Mary. but Brooks treats her like Meryl Streep and I also liked the late Bruno Kirby as Robert's assistant in the editing room. There are cameos by George Kennedy, Meadowlark Lemon, and James L. Brooks, who would, two year later, win twin Oscars for writing and directing Terms of Endearment. Fans of Brooks' offbeat brand of humor will definitely find entertainment value.

Deadpool 2
After seeing the first film, I honestly didn't think it could be done, but I am happy to report that Deadpool 2 is a sequel that proves to be a worthy follow-up to the original.

Ryan Reynolds returns as Wade Wilson the disfigured superhero who is fully aware that he is a character in a movie and makes no apologies for it. This film opens with our hero planning to kill himself after the death of girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) and while in the midst of giving up, hears from old friends Colassus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead who have brought him to a private prep school to help with a troubled student named Russell (Julian Dennison) who has been abused by teachers at the school and who has mutant hands with which he can set anything on fire. Wade's attempts to save Russell fail dismally and ends them up in a futuristic prison, which is just the beginning of this offbeat adventure.

Once again star and screenwriter Ryan Reynolds, along with co-screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have constructed an off the wall action adventure journey that adheres to none of the rules of movie making, evidenced from jump by the opening credits which had me rolling on the floor. The film also borrows characters and elements from other films but fully acknowledges what their doing so the viewer is obligated to roll with it. This story not only borrows characters from other movies, but also introduces new characters who might have what it takes to begin their own movie franchises, an onscreen audition if you will.

This process is actually performed onscreen in the form of an actual audition when Wade and his bartender buddy Weasel actually hold auditions for superheroes in order to help Wade rescue Russell. Wade hires five new superheroes to help him and five minutes after they begin their mission, the only one still alive is a bad ass girl named Domino who says her only superpower is Luck...again, this movie just refuses to follow the rules.

The story gets a little muddy at times, but it did in the first film too, as it usually does in most Marvel movies come to think of it. Good guys becomes bad guys and vice-versa. Josh Brolin's character, Cable, being the prime example. Cable seemed to be a New Millenium re-thinking of Arnold Schwarzeneggar's Terminator...watch the way the character is introduced in the film and the way he recharges after a day of crimefighting, you can't help but think of Ah-nold in the 1984 classic. Other movies get affectionate winks here, including Flashdance and ...Say Anything. I have to admit this film did not present the story I was expecting...I was hoping that Wade might have his face repaired, but that never happened. This movie also takes the classic movie death scene and completely turns it on its ear.

Reynolds wears the character of Wade Wilson like a comfortable shoe and Brolin actually manages to keep Cable from being a character completely controlled by makeup and CG effects. If you don't blink, you'll catch cameos by Brad Pitt, Terry Crews, Alan Tudyck, Matt Damon, Hugh Jackman and screenwriters Wernick and Rheese . If you enjoyed the first film, the same entertainment value can be found here and be sure to stay tuned through the closing credits.

Mr. Skeffington
A sparkling performance from Bette Davis anchors a lavish 1944 soap opera called Mr. Skeffington, a scintillating melodrama that might go on a little too long, but provides solid entertainment for true fans of classic cinema.

Davis stars as Fanny Trellis, a vain and flighty society beauty in 1914 New York who, at the beginning of the story, has four different men wanting to marry her and one is not the least bit deterred by the other three. A dinner party at Fanny's home is interrupted by a wealthy Jewish businessman named Job Skeffington (Claude Rains) who informs Fanny that her younger brother Trippy has stolen $24,000 from his company. Fanny confronts her brother who has no remorse about what he has done, but disappears anyway. In an effort to save her brother from prosecution, Fanny actually agrees to marry Mr. Skeffington, who it turns out has been admiring Fanny for many years from a distance.

As the story continues to unfold, we watch a very patient Skeffington deal with Fanny's many suitors, who are not the least bit affected by the fact that Fanny is now married and Fanny exists in a loveless marriage that produces a child she doesn't really want, but eventually we watch time and the consequences of Fanny's behavior catch up with her.

The screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein covers almost 40 years in the lives of these characters and effectively captures the changes that most of the characters go through over the years. The central character is fascinating, a little Scarlett O' Hara, a little Blanche DuBois, though possibly not quite as manipulative as those characters, those this is definitely a woman accustomed to batting her eyelashes to get what she wants and watching her realize that she's going to need more to tame Skeffington is quite a pleasure. It was also a pleasure to learn that when Skeffington wasn't getting what he wanted from Fanny, that he went looking elsewhere. The scene where Skeffington and his secretary run into Fanny another man at a club was worth the price of admission alone.

Davis is just glorious in this tour de force performance that allowed the actress to age thirty years with help from the makeup department. Franz Waxman's music is a bit much at times, but it is mostly very effective. This performance earned Bette Davis her seventh Oscar nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress. Claude Rains matches his leading lady scene for scene and received a Supporting Actor nomination for his efforts as well. I also loved Walter Abel as George, Fanny's cousin/conscience and Jerome Cowan as one of Fanny's smitten suitors, but this is Davis' show and she never forgets it. Many years later when talking about this film in interviews, Davis referred to it as "Mrs. Skeffington" and after watching it, you'll see why.

When in Rome
The 2010 film When in Rome is one of those romantic comedies that you know exactly where it's going but an overly complex and often logic defying screenplay make the journey a labored one.

The film stars Kristen Bell as Beth, a curator for The Guggenheim who flies to Rome for her sister's wedding and finds herself immediately attracted to the best man, Nick (Josh Duhamel) but a misunderstanding finds Beth getting drunk at Rome's famous fountain of love where people throw coins in and make romantic wishes. A bitter and drunk Beth digs some coins out of the fountain and it is revealed that the people who threw the coins in the fountain are now officially in love with Beth.

They include a fake Italian artist (Will Arnett), a wealthy client of Beth's named Al Russo (Danny DeVito), an arrogant male model named Gale (Dax Shepherd) and a street magician (Jon Heder) who are now following Beth everywhere. Beth learns she can break the curse by returning the coins to the fountain herself or to the people who threw them in but her mission gets hopelessly tangled when she begins to believe that one of the coins she took from the fountain was thrown there by Nick.

The screenplay by David Diamond and David Weissman is a little long-winded and asks the viewer to accept a lot. It seemed to be a HUGE coincidence that all of the guys whose coins Beth grabbed all happened to live in Manhattan and how the spell that had them falling in love with her actually led them to her was never really explained. I also had a hard time accepting the fact that these guys just willingly accepted their sudden obsession for this girl they never met or how seeing one poker chip in Nick's apartment made Beth leap to the conclusion that it was his poker chip in the fountain.

If you can go with all this, there are a few laughs to be gleaned here, not to mention some gorgeous Italian and Manhattan scenery. Bell works hard at making Beth likable displaying a gift for physical comedy and Duhamel is sex on legs as usual. I also was tickled by Shepherd as the male model and Keir O'Donnell, who was so funny as Todd in Wedding Crashers, whoi has some funny moments as the Italian priest as does Don Johnson as Beth's father. If you can get past the plot holes, it's a decent time-killer, nothing more.

Serial Mom
The king of Bizarro Cinema, John Waters, scores a bulls eye with 1994's Serial Mom, a ferociously black comedy that pokes fun at suburbia and celebrity obsession that had this reviewer rolling on the floor for the majority of its running time.

The film stars Kathleen Turner as Beverly Sutphin, an on the surface normal suburban wife who we learn is making obscene telephone calls to neighbors and eventually murders six people and how, instead of putting her at the top of the FBI's most wanted list, makes her a nationwide celebrity and merchandising dream.

Waters is in some really foreign territory for him with this story. This is one of the few films he's done that has a contemporary setting, as opposed to 1950's Baltimore, the setting for some of his most famous work. Waters breaks a lot of rules here, even proceeding the film with a disclaimer that what we are about to see is a true story, giving it an air of authenticity by running time crawls at the bottom of the screen throughout the film reminding us what day of the week it is and what time it is. Waters' story has a spark of originality in that we don't have to wait until the end of the film to see Beverly get caught, but keeps the story moving in a logic defying direction that tosses realism out the window for the most part but provides just enough realistic touches to the story that play into the docudrama feel but never fails to entertain.

The creation of this character Beverly Sutphin is a clearly collaborative effort between the director and the actress. This character could have become a cartoonish maniac, but Kathleen Turner's layered yet effectively underplayed performance keeps the character somewhat believable and keeps the viewer behind her. This performance is a masterpiece in the art of body language that is an absolute joy...watch her as Beverly ignores her family at the breakfast table because of a fly on the butter or as she and her family enter church followed by the entire police force. Turner absolutely commands the screen without ever resorting to scenery chewing.

Sam Waterston charms as Beverly's husband and Waters rep company regular Ricki Lake is also fun as Beverly's boy-crazy daughter, as is Matthew Lillard as her son who sees dollar signs in his mother's new found celebrity. Other Waters rep company members like Mink Stole and Patricia Hearst can also be glimpsed in supporting roles and there's also a fun cameo by Suzanne Somers, who wants to play Beverly in a movie. I also loved Basil Poledouris' music. Definitely from the "Put your brain in check and enjoy" school of filmmaking.

Hustle
Fresh off the success of their smash hit The Longest Yard, Burt Reynolds and director Robert Aldrich re-teamed for a pretentious and moody little crime drama called Hustle, which is well acted but suffers due to a convoluted story.

Reynolds plays Phil Gaines, a divorced, LA police detective who is working very hard at making his live-in relationship with a high class call girl (Catherine Deneuve) work while investigating the death of a teenage girl whose father has decided to take the law into his own hands.

Screenwriter Steve Shagan's story really is two separate stories that could have made two movies, but the attempt to combine both these stories doesn't really work and makes this movie way too long to keep the viewer's attention. The story of the cop and the call girl is quite intriguing, especially with the unusual casting of the roles, but this story eventually gets dwarfed by the murder mystery which is about as predictable as they come.

Aldrich's direction is a little undisciplined and a real disappointment from a director with such a pedigree. I guess he thought after The Longest Yard, he thought audiences would eat up anything that he and Reynolds collaborated on. This was my first viewing of this film since its theatrical release in 1975 and the theater was practically empty. It might have helped if Aldrich had worked a little closer with Shagan, helping him with a story that was more engaging and didn't put up a wall between itself and the audience in an attempt to be deep and hip and trying to make the story of a man in love with a prostitute but not being able to deal with her work actually seem original. And then to try to tell another story on top of that...it was just a bit much.

Aldrich does work well with his star and gets a solid performance from him, and though the casting was an interesting idea, the chemistry between Reynolds and Deneuve is non-existent. Eddie Albert, who also co-starred in The Longest Yard, creates another slimy villain here but the acting honors here really have to go to Oscar winner Ben Johnson, superb as the shell-shocked father of the murdered girl who refuses to accept what his little girl has become. Paul Winfield and Eileen Brennan also makes the most of their roles as Reynolds' partner and Johnson's wife and if you don't blink, you'll catch a cameo from future Freddy Kreuger, Robert Englund, but the whole thing just takes too long to get where it's going and the extra ending is a real downer.

Madame X (1966)
Lana Turner gave one of her strongest performances in the 1966 remake of Madame X, a lush and lavish soap opera that has everything fans of the genre look for.

Holly Anderson (Turner) is the neglected trophy wife of a wealthy aspiring politician named Clayton Anderson (John Forsythe) who has an affair with playboy Phil Benton (Ricardo Montalban) but Benton dies accidentally though Holly is believed to have murdered him. To avoid prosecution, Holly fakes her death with the aid of her nasty mother-in-law (Constance Bennett) and begins a new life in Europe under a new identity. However, when someone there learns who she really is and plans to use it against her, she murders him and when she goes on trial, she is unknowingly defended by her son with Clay (Keir Dullea).

Producer Ross Hunter pulled out all the stops to bring this lavish remake to the screen, a story which first hit the screens in 1937 with Gladys George in the starring role. There seems to be a plot element in the remake that differs from the original. In Jean Holloway's screenplay, Clay initially never finds out about Holly's affair and all he knows that Holly drowned at sea. In the original film, the husband is the one who throws her out of the house, motivating her to fake her death. I guess this small point was changed to make the heroine more sympathetic, which it does, but I have to wonder how different the story played out in the 1937 film.

Ross Hunter and director David Lowell Rich have employed first rate production values in bringing this sudsy story to the screen including some wonderful location photography and stunning Jean Louis gowns for the star to wear.

Admittedly, this was one of the few times that Turner was more than just a clothes horse, she gives one of the strongest performances of her career here. Turner had not been this effective onscreen since her Oscar-nominated performance in 1957's Peyton Place and I loved Constance Bennett as her bitchy mother-in-law. For fans of the star and of the genre, this is appointment movie viewing.

Mulholland Drive
David Lynch, the creative force behind Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and the TV series Twin Peaks takes us on another bizarre journey with 2001's Mulholland Drive,a noir-ish picture puzzle of a movie whose parts take just a bit too long to become a whole.

The primary story elements here include a woman who has been in a car accident and doesn't remember who she is, an aspiring actress named Betty who has come to stay at her Aunt's apartment; a mysterious blue box, a purse full of money, and a film director named Adam who is being pressured to cast a particular actress in his latest film.

Another entry from the "And then I woke up" school of filmmaking, Lynch has crafted a story so bizarre, rich with eerie symbolism and red herrings that there is no possible way that what we are watching can be completely steeped in realism, but this isn't exactly foreign territory for Lynch so fans of the director will be right at home here, though even Lynch purists might find their patience tested here a bit.

Lynch has a stylish directorial eye that comes through in every frame of this film...the director employs all kinds of cinematic trickery in order to tell a story that the viewer can not only follow, but also demands complete attention from the viewer, even though said attention isn't completely awarded. There are a couple of things that happen here that were never explained to my satisfaction. but it's David Lynch and if you dwell too much on little things you miss the big picture.

The appeal of the big picture came from the relationship that developed between Betty and this amnesiac beauty who called herself Rita after seeing a poster of the movie Gilda. These characters are truly polar opposites...when we see Betty getting off the plane, she practically has corn cobs coming out of her ears and our first glimpse of Rita also indicates that this is a girl who has been around the block and even though she's forgotten who she is, she still senses a danger courtesy of the life she's forgotten. I loved that as Betty and Rita try to piece Rita's life back together, Betty became more and more intrigued, Rita became more terrified and just wanted to let sleeping dogs lie.

Lynch's attention to production values is to be applauded with special attention to art direction/set direction, editing, and sound. He has also assembled a solid cast to tell this story...Naomi Watts makes Betty's transition from naive country girl to amateur sleuth very believable and Justin Theroux was terrific as Adam. It was also lovely seeing former MGM musical icon Ann Miller, in her final film role, as Betty's landaldy. But the real star here was the breathtaking Laura Harring whose steamy Rita conjured up images of Marilyn, Jean Harlow, and, yes, Rita Hayworth. Harring is riveting and enchanting and puts you behind this lost soul she portrays from the start. It goes on a little too long, but Lynch hit a real bullseye here, a loving homage to the film noir with a contemporary seasoning.

High Fidelity
A smart and funny screenplay and a delicious starring performance from John Cusack make the 2000 comedy High Fidelity worth a look.

Cusack plays Rob, the owner of a record store who has just broken up with his girlfriend, a high powered attorney named Laura. In trying to figure out what went wrong with Laura, Rob decides to look back at his romantic history and breakdown in intimate detail the five worst breakups he ever went through and decides to share what happened with the moviegoer.

Yes, a lot of movies break the 4th wall but this one knocks it down at the beginning of the film and keeps it down for the majority of the running time. The screenplay, to which Cusack was one of the contributors, cleverly bounces through illustrations of Rob's past and present relationships and his views of what happened which he shares directly to the camera. I have not enjoyed a character talking directly to the camera this much since Matthew Broderick did it in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Cusack takes us inside Rob's head and the feel of what is presented is so spontaneous that there are times it feels like Rob doesn't mean to interrupt the story with his views but he does anyway.

The only thing that didn't work for me here and kept this movie from being a home run was that I just found the character of Laura unlikable and unworthy of Rob. Maybe my unconditional love of Cusack as an actor had something to do with it, but I found this woman to be kind of a bitch who manipulates and uses Rob the same way Jenny used and manipulated Forrest in Forrest Gump. I don't think it was a coincidence that at the point where it looked like Laura and Rob are about to reconcile, Rob's talking directly to the camera stopped.

Still. I found this movie to be thoroughly enjoyable because John Cusack is one of those actors who can make mediocre material seem a lot better than it is, and this material is far above mediocre, helped by the energetic and imaginative direction by Stephen Frears (The Queen). Jack Black and Todd Louiso both provide laughs as Rob's employees and there are fun contributions from future Oscar winners Catherine Zeta Jones and Tim Robbins as well. It's really Cusack's baby though and he totally runs with it, making you overlook any issues one might have with what's going on.

The Boost
The Boost is an overripe melodrama from 1988 about the horrors of drug addiction that actually made its place in cinematic history during production.

Based on a book by Ben Stein, this is the story of Lenny Brown (James Woods) an upwardly mobile New Yorker who gives up hustling tax shelters when he is offered a job selling commercial real estate in Los Angeles. Within a year, Lenny is driving a Mercedes and buying a plane, but when business begins to start going sour, Lenny and his wife, Linda (Sean Young) find solace in cocaine.

This movie made plenty of headlines back in '88 before its release because of the constant feuding between James Woods and Sean Young. The tension between the stars is visible here but it is really only the tip of the iceberg of what is wrong with this film.

Like so many films about addiction, this film addresses the problem but doesn't really address the solution. We watch Lenny sink into the quicksand of addiction and as things get worse and worse, refuses to admit that cocaine has anything to do with it. He then makes the mistake that the solution is substitution...the idea that getting off one drug is to use something else that might not be as harmful. The movie also perpetrates the myth that addiction can be handled by quitting cold turkey. The primary problem with this movie is that it knocks us over the head with the consequences of addiction, but never addresses rehabilitation.

The story also takes way too long to unfold here...we are thirty minutes into the film before cocaine is even mentioned and it's another fifteen minutes before we actually see any one doing the drug. Though, the first thirty minutes or so do take an accurate look at a different addiction, money, and how it can change people. Maybe a look at that addiction might have made a more interesting one than the melodramatic mess that this film degenerates into.

Woods' performance is way over the top and Young is just whiny and annoying. Steven Hill has some solid moments as Woods' new boss as does John Kapelos as the guy who gets Lenny hooked, but this film only delivers half the message it should and is, therefore, only half as effective as it should be.

RICH,YOUNG AND PRETTY
Jane Powell was one of the busiest actresses on the MGM lot during the early 1950's; unfortunately, the 1951 musical Rich, Young and Pretty was one of her lesser efforts, despite her crystal clear soprano, but even that gorgeous voice isn't enough to carry this one.

Powell plays the daughter of a former Texas rancher (Wendell Corey) who is now an international diplomat who has reluctantly accepted a post in Paris where his daughter and housekeeper (Una Merkel) will accompany him. The diplomat is reluctant because he is afraid that his daughter might meet her mother (Danielle Darrieux), who left her daughter when she was a toddler to return to Paris where she is a famous nightclub entertainer.

Of course, the mother learns of her daughter's imminent arrival and arranges to meet her without revealing who she is. The mother/daughter reunion is complicated by the son of a French diplomat (Vic Damone, in his film debut) and by the mother's dashing boyfriend (Fernando Lamas).

This film could have been something special, but I wish producer Joe Pasternak and director Norman Taurog had paid a little more attention to continuity, logistics, and certain technical aspects of the film. Despite the seemingly large budget attributed to this musical, it's obvious that this film never leaves the sound stages of MGM...some actual location shooting in Paris would have been nice. There is some questionable casting too...Damone and Lamas are both supposed to be playing Frenchmen but Damone sounds like Damone and Lamas sounds like Ricky Ricardo. Lamas is given a solo number about halfway through the film where the dubbing is so badly done, it's obvious the man isn't doing his own singing. With MGM's large stable of stars, why not just cast someone in this role who could actually sing?

There are some nice songs orchestrated by David Rose including "Paris". "I Can See You", "Wonder Why", "Dark is the Night", and a delightful duet called "We Never Talk Much."

Powell and Damone have a nice chemistry together that they would repeat in 1955's Hit the Deck and French cinema icon Darrieux is lovely as Powell's mother and the fact that Powell and Darrieux really look like mother and daughter didn't hurt. Corey is fun as the dad and Merkel cracks wise in the tradition of Eve Arden and Thelma Ritter, I just wish a little more care had put into this production.

Tag
The power of friendship gets an extremely effective examination through a childhood game in 2018's Tag, a clever, raucous, and often logic-defying comedy that is amazingly based on a true story.

Hoagie (Ed Helms), Callahan (John Hamm), Chili (Jake Johnson). Sable (Hannibal Buress), and Jerry (Jeremy Renner) have been playing tag since they were kids but have continued the game into adulthood, resuming the game once a year for the month of May. Hoagie, Callahan, Chili, and Sable have become obsessed with tagging Jerry, who, incredibly has never been tagged in thirty years of playing but the guys think they finally have their chance because Jerry is getting married and they know exactly where he's going to be.

Throw into the mix Hoagie's wife, Anna (Isla Fisher) who is totally into the game but is not an actual player because the rules the guys made as kids say no girls allowed, a reporter named Rebecca (Annabelle Wallis) who learns about the game during an interview with Callahan but thinks this would be a much more interesting story; Jerry's fiancee, Susan (Leslie Bibb) who knows all about the game but is not about to have it mess up her wedding; and Cheryl (Rashida Jones), the childhood obsession of Callahan and Chili.

I absolutely love the idea of this movie. I absolutely love the idea of grown men taking a month out of their lives annually to play a game that most of us stopped playing when we were ten. I was impressed with the intricacy involved in the execution of the game in order to allow them to play this game one month a year without interrupting their normal adult lives, though Chili really didn't seem to have a normal adult life anyway. The amendments to the game and the truces, which were akin to time-outs gave a legitimacy to the proceedings that I really didn't see coming.

I was not only impressed with the lengths that Hoagie, Sable, Chili, and Callahan went to in order to reconnect and continue their war against Jerry, but the fact that Jerry was ALWAYS one step ahead of them no matter their plan. The initial reunion between Jerry and the rest of the gang was brilliantly executed, a little Bond, a little Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, with the aid of some first rate slow motion photography and editing. I loved that Hoagie actually applied for a job at Callahan's company as a janitor just so he could tag him. The eventual cat and mouse that ensues between Jerry and the rest of the guys is so intoxicating that I really wasn't sure if I wanted these guys to tag Jerry.

Director Jeff Tomsic has crafted an elaborate action comedy that works on all levels, including a terrific ensemble cast featuring standout work from Helms, Johnson, Bibb, and especially Renner. Despite a brief and surprising dark turn near the climax, this one is rowdy fun from opening to closing.

Now Voyager
Bette Davis had one of the biggest hits of her career with the 1942 romantic melodrama Now Voyager. They don't make 'em like this anymore.

Davis received an Oscar nomination for her performance as Charlotte Vale, a repressed spinster whose life is completely controlled by her manipulative mother (Gladys Cooper). Charlotte reluctantly agrees to therapy with a Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains) who not only teaches Charlotte how to deal with her mother without alienating her, but also helps her discover her inner glamour puss, which Charlotte carefully brings to the surface and presents on an cruise, where she meets Jerry (Paul Henreid) an unhappily married man with children.

There is no denying that there are elements of Casey Robinson's screenplay that are dated, particularly the whole concept of spinsterhood being some kind of condition that can be treated with therapy, but this introductory element of the story was the most compelling for me. I love the first meeting between Charlotte and Dr. Jaquith where she shows him her room and we actually get a nice little backstory revealing the events that drove Charlotte into her spinster shell, a rarity in films like this. I also liked that Charlotte didn't spend half the movie's running time fighting Dr. Jaquith and what he was trying to do for her.

And as enchanting as Charlotte's transformation is when it does happen, I love the fact that even though Charlotte has changed on the outside, her inside has not caught up with her new, glamorous exterior yet. Her opening moments with Jerry reveal that, despite her new attractive exterior, Charlotte still feels like the overweight dowdy spinster and fights these feelings for a good deal of the running time, due to her inability to stand up to her mother and the scene where she finally does is cheer-inducing.

And yes, this is the film where smoking became sexy...audiences went wild when Henreid lit two cigarettes in his mouth and handed one to Davis. Davis was the first and only actress who made smoking a cigarette look like the sexiest thing in the world.

The film really sizzles when Davis and Gladys Cooper share the screen. Cooper's evil Mrs. Vale also earned her an Oscar nomination and Max Steiner's lush and memorable music won an Oscar. Davis fans will be in heaven here and I rarely recall her looking more beautiful onscreen.

Eddie Murphy: Delirious
He had only made one movie and was actually still a regular on Saturday Night Live when Eddie Murphy, on the cusp of superstardom, proved himself to be a comic powerhouse with a concert called Eddie Murphy: Delirious

After the success of 48 HRS it was decided that Eddie had the chops to carry his own concert film. Filmed live from Washington DC. Murphy commands the stage from the moment he struts onstage in his fire engine red leather suit. Unconcerned with political correctness, Murphy starts out the concert by making fun of homosexuals and AIDS, material that I'm not sure would go over so well in 2018 though I still found myself laughing.

Murphy showed his skill as an impressionist offering very effective takes on Mr. T., Jackie Gleason, and Elvis. Some of these impressions are so accurate if you looked away from the screen while he's doing it you'd swear these people are actually onstage.

It's no secret that Richard Pryor was one of Murphy's biggest influences and you can see that influence on his material. The racist-themed material that we expect from Murphy does surface but it's never really meanspirited...his analysis of race was more on the level that whites aren't bad but that blacks are better...well at least this particular black. Eddie makes no qualms about how good he thinks he looks and spends a good deal of the concert shaking his ass at the audience and it goes without saying that the females in the audience went wild.

Despite everything that comes before, the funniest part of the concert is when Eddie imitates his drunken father and uncle at the family cookouts. This part of the show had me on the floor, not to mention his childhood memories of the ice cream man and being pelted by his mother's atomic-charged high heel. For a concert that is almost 40 years old, this one still brings the funny, though I still have to wonder how much of this stuff would have gone over if it had premiered a year ago. It's also a little bittersweet considering the path that Eddie's career has taken but it was a great reminder that he is still one of the funniest men in the business.

Rocky III
As the director and screenwriter of Rocky III, Sylvester Stallone gets a little full of himself, thinking his audience will accept anything at this point and though entertainment is provided here, Stallone asks us to accept an awful lot here.

As this 1982 film opens, we watch the Balboas enjoying the perks of Rocky's 10 successful title defenses, including a huge mansion, endorsement deals, and somewhere between the 2nd film and this one, Adrian seems to have gotten over her obsession with getting Rocky to walk away from the ring forever. Unfortunately, Rocky is blissfully unaware that his title defenses were very carefully orchestrated in order to guarantee victories and when a beast named Clubber Lang (Mr. T.) who wants a shot at the title and can no longer be ignored, Rocky finds his kingdom crumbling around him and when he decides to get it back, he finds help from an unexpected source.

Stallone's screenplay attempts to give equal time to all the characters we have come to love but some so-called storylines do get short shrift. The opening scenes of Rocky dealing with brother-in-law Paulie (Burt Young), jealous of Rocky's success are solved a little too quickly when he offers Paulie a job in his corner and is happy as a clam for the rest of the movie.

I do like that Stallone felt the need to bring fresh blood to the franchise with the introduction of Clubber Lang, a more than worthy opponent for the Italian Stallion and the first fight where they meet is completely believable, even if it's not necessarily what we want to see for Rocky. The devastation that Rocky goes through during the first fight with Lang just makes Rocky's re-match a little hard to swallow. The verbal taunting of the opponents before the match started and Rocky suddenly getting a second wind when he starts verbally abusing Lang just smacked of melodrama to me. Even the usually winning training sequences with new trainer Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) have these two guys, who hated each other for two films, bringing an almost homoerotic quality to these scenes.

Even Talia Shire, who I thought was the best thing about the first film, starts coming off as whiny and annoying here and Hulk Hogan's gratuitous cameo as a pro wrestler named Thunderlips silly. Bill Conti's music still works.

27 Dresses
Despite a somewhat original hook for a story and a solid cast, the 2008 romantic comedy 27 Dresses is a labored journey that takes a much longer road to its predictable ending than need be.

Katherine Heigl plays Jane, a woman whose passion is being a professional maid of honor.
She has served this sacred role at 27 different ceremonies and has all of the dresses stuffed in a closet in her apartment. Jane's younger sister, Tess (Malin Ackerman) arrives to visit and finds herself involved in a whirlwind romance with Jane's boss (Edward Burns- whatever happened to him?), for whom Jane has been harboring a secret crush for years. There's also a cynical newspaper reporter (James Marsden) who actually writes about weddings who is fascinated by Jane's secret passion which turns into his own crush.

Screenwriter Aline Bosh McKenna has fashioned the ultimate chick flick here where we are introduced to a group of people who are romantically linked to the wrong people and we're wondering how long it's going to take for these people to wake up and realizes they're with the wrong people. The reporter character was also a real enigma for me...what kind of straight, white male is a wedding columnist?

Despite the mismatched couples, the most interesting relationship in the movie is between Jane and her sister. Tess shows up on her sister's doorstep all sweetness and smiles and actually turns out to be a straight up bitch. To make matters worse, Jane insists on defending this girl for the majority of the running time, but Jane's final revenge on little sis was delicious.

Katherine Heigl has never been one of my favorite actresses, but I actually found her almost likable here and Ackerman completely invested in the inner bitch of her character. Burns is a charmer and I also liked Brian Kerwin as the girls' dad, Judy Greer as Jane's BFF and Melora Hardin as Marsden's editor. It takes a little too long to get where it's going and gets overly cute at times, but it's better than a hot poker in the eye.

Cocktail
Often reputed as one of the worst films on Tom Cruise's resume, the 1988 romantic comedy Cocktail goes a long ways on Cruise's charisma but ultimately is dragged down by a screenplay that's not sure what kind of story it wants to tell.

Cruise plays Brian Flanagan, a military vet who arrives in New York City to conquer the business world but because of his lack of education and experience finds all those doors closing to him. One day after hitting the bricks all day, Brian walks into a trendy upper east side tavern and is hired by bartender/manager Doug Coughlin (Bryan Brown) to tend bar despite no experience in that area either.

Of course, Brian becomes the most popular bartender in Manhattan in about 20 minutes but a misunderstanding with Doug finds them parting ways and Brian moving to Jamaica to be a bartender where he finds romance with a vacationing New York waitress (Elisabeth Shue) and a wealthy, older fashion executive (Lisa Banes).

Heywood Gould's rambling screenplay is just trying to tell too many stories here. First it seems like we're going to get a story about how hard it is to get a job in Manhattan without a degree or experience and then we see the guy get hired to be a bartender right off the street and within a week is flipping liquor bottles like a pro and like being a bartender is the noblest profession there is. Then we have the story of the guy risking possible true love for a woman with a fat bank account. Frankly, the story of how to be a great bartender is the most entertaining aspect of the story; unfortunately Gould doesn't trust his own story and director Roger Donaldson doesn't seem to trust the chemistry between his stars.

The chemistry between Cruise and Brown is surprisingly solid and their do or die friendship that is the supposed anchor this story often defies logic, but the undying loyalty that these guys have for each other is kind of ingratiating and I think if the film had focused more on this story instead of these paper-thin romances that Brian has, this movie had the potential to be something really special.

Cruise is almost always worth watching and this film is no exception, I just wish the director and screenwriter had invested a little more in his chemistry with Brown than with the empty-headed Shue, whose lifeless performances does nothing to endear her to the proceedings. There is some lovely Manhattan and Jamaican scenery and the film is also rich with some really bad covers of some of the biggest hit songs of the 1980's. It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it's no Citizen Kane either.

Marriage on the Rocks
Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin had their final star pairing in a saucy little comedy from 1965, Marriage on the Rocks which does provide laughs that mostly come from an unexpected source.

Sinatra plays Dan Edwards, a workaholic advertising executive who has been neglecting wife Val (Deborah Kerr) for years, evidenced by Val's first appearance where she tells her lawyer she wants to divorce Dan on the grounds of boredom. At the urging of best pal Ernie Brewer (Martin), Dan takes Val to Mexico for a second honeymoon where Dan and Val end up getting accidentally divorced. When their plans to remarry get interrupted by Dan's business, he sends Ernie to Mexico to let Val know and somehow Ernie and Val end up married.

In the 60', this film was what was probably referred to then as a "sex comedy", because a good portion of Cy Howard's screenplay is centered on sex, how to get it back in a marriage and how to get it without making an actual commitment, even though I think the actual word is only used once in the entire film. This comedy cleverly updates the Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedies of a few years earlier, looking at those characters twenty years after those films ended. Howard's screenplay works very hard at being hip (for 1965) with its implied but never overt observations about sex, most importantly that sex is still an important part of marriage, even after 19 years.

I must admit surprise where this film went during the second half after Ernie and Val end up married. Instead of immediately trying to remedy the predicament, Val decides to use the situation to make Dan jealous and Dan decides to relive his bachelor days and we're not sure if things are ever going to get untangled.

Sinatra and Martin have always been an engaging screen team and this film is no exception and there are some funny turns along the way by Hermione Baddelly, Cesar Romero, and John McGiver, not to mention the film debut of Frank's daughter, Nancy, playing his onscreen daughter. But the real joy and fun in this film actually came from Deborah Kerr, delivering a deliciously breezy comic performance as the bored housewife determined to save her marriage and then make the best of it when that starts looking to be impossible. Just as she did in The Grass is Greener, Kerr shows a penchant for light comedy that cannot be denied and director Jack Donahue takes full advantage of it. Kerr makes this film seem a lot better than it really is. Kudos as well to the art direction/set direction crew and to Nelson Riddle's zippy music. For a film that was released when I was eight years old, this one held up pretty well.