By http://www.impawards.com/1944/lifeboat.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17058037
Lifeboat - (1944)
Despite the fact that the Second World War is receding into the far off distance,
Lifeboat is still a compulsively enjoyable watch. Many directors would have struggled with the limited setting, but Hitchcock, much like he did with
Rope, proves that you can sustain tension and drama in the one place with enough characters and high enough stakes. Of course, being wartime propaganda, the German connives and can't be trusted - but most people who saw this film at the time complained that the Germans were portrayed in too positive a fashion. Goes to show what public opinion is worth. Hitchcock's Nazi villain makes the entire group of lifeboat passengers his quarry and tries to fool them into captivity while avoiding it himself - and to me that's not positive, just resourceful. Anyway - the running-time breezes by as various disasters make it seem this small boat with such an eclectic assortment of passengers is doomed. Really enjoyable film to this day.
8/10
By Warner Bros. Pictures Distributing Corporation - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/inde...urid=118763727
Sayonara - (1957)
Well, this was certainly interesting in varied ways. Taking on racism,
Sayonara can't help but be a fraught journey into the realm of awkwardness - probably due to how rare it was for a big studio to undertake such a project during the 1950s. For example - I can't for the life of me figure out why Ricardo Montalbán plays a Japanese guy in this instead of a..well, a Japanese guy! He comes complete with fake slanted eyes and accent, and the result made me very uncomfortable. Marlon Brando's acting is nearly too good for the type of film this is - his Southern Major Lloyd Gruver brings a raucous American lack of cultural awareness, and as such we have parts of
Sayonara there we're
meant to be grimacing at. What saves it is the miraculous decision to go with the dark, tough ending - a marriage between Joe Kelly (Red Buttons) and Katsumi (Miyoshi Umeki) giving a tragic example of what banning interracial marriages leads to. What a sad, sad secondary story we have there. Brando and Miiko Taka fare better, and the addition of a soft-skinned young James Garner makes this worth seeing. You just have to allow the film a little leeway, even though the production is on location in Japan, it does seem like director Joshua Logan might be a little out of his element. Not totally though - there's lots of kabuki, Japanese puppetry and culture included.
Anyway, if there's one element of Japan Logan and co really embrace
strongly, it's the male-oriented and dominated one. This one featured at the '58 Oscars - missing Best Picture and Actor for Brando, but winning Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki statuettes for their tragic arcs. A strange time capsule - teaching anyone who sees it now in the wrong way, but still well worth a look for Brando and co - not to mention how the 50s tried to tackle the race issue.
7/10
By The cover art can or could be obtained from IMP Awards., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34360006
The Words - (2012)
This film just didn't pan out - and I think it should have been scrapped. It's a story within a story within a story - and when you have so many degrees of reality and fiction mashing together parts aren't going to receive their due attention. In the end the story with Dennis Quaid and some floozy, relating a tale about Bradley Cooper's Rory and wife Zoe Saldana (Dora), who has himself stolen a story from "The Old Man" (Jeremy Irons) about his younger self (played by Ben Barnes) and his French wife and sick (soon to be dead) baby - well, nothing gets time to breath or live, and as a result
The Words leaves you as soon as the credits are rolling - when you walk away you'll forget it ever existed.
3.5/10
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