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Leslie Caron: The Reluctant Star
She was a prima ballerina by the age of 16 and at age 18, she was the leading lady in the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 1951, which was the springboard for a career that produced over 20 films, an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and two Oscar nominations. This lovely and luminous star is the subject of a 2016 documentary called Leslie Caron: The Reluctant Star.

This detailed and imaginative documentary traces Caron's amazing life, starting with an extremely disturbing relationship with her severely depressed mother, who inadvertently motivated her daughter to pursue the career she did. At the age of 16, she was a member of the #1 ballet company in Paris and a year later, she was cast in a ballet called "Oedipus and the Sphinx". One night that she performed this ballet, Gene Kelly was in the audience and contacted Caron immediately regarding a screentest for An American in Paris . She didn't want anything to do with it and only agreed to test as a courtesy.

The main thing that I loved about this documentary that sets it apart from most other movie star documentaries is there is no off-screen narration. Director Larry Weinstein had the brilliant idea of letting the star tell her story. We watch Caron wonder through Paris and England, places where she grew up as well as famous movie locations, and as a camera follows her, the story of her amazing life comes from her own lips. I loved when she went to a hotel where she and her mother lived when Germany was occupying France. It's amusing when the concierge refuses to allow Caron and her camera to come in the building. It was so unsettling watching Caron stroll through various Parisian locations and no one seemed to recognize her.

Of course, the behind the scene memories that she shares during this very special journey are worth the price of admission alone. She talked in length about how hard the dance floor was where the ballet in An American in Paris was filmed and how crazy Vincente Minnelli became during the filming of Gigi. She even share about her brief romance with Warren Beatty, which, of course happened after Promise Her Anything because it's Hollywood legend that Beatty always falls in love with his leading ladies. I think my favorite thing she shared was, as probably the only living dancer who worked with both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, the difference between the way the two men danced.

We learn there was some heartache after fame as well. Her marriage to Peter Hall crumbled because he didn't want her working anymore, which separated her from her children. We do get to meet her son, Christopher, who adores his mother and has actually gotten to work with her on a British television series called The Durrells on which Christopher is a producer. A one of a kind documentary on a one of a kind movie star that is not to be missed.



Black Mass
Despite a first rate cast working at the top of their game, 2015's Black Mass is an overblown and overlong mob docudrama that has so much going on the viewer needs a scorecard to keep track of who's what, but long before fadeout, we just don't care..

This is the story of famed Boston mobster John "Whitey" Bulger and the decades of futile work that went into bringing the man to justice. Everything the feds tried to get this guy, even trying to use his state senator brother as a way in but nothing works. Bulger actually had the cajones to pretend to work as a police informant while still running the infamous Winter Hill gang, a position which eventually led to charges of racketeering, extortion, narcotics distribution, and 19 counts of murder.

If you're looking for a viable cinematic experience regarding mob and police corruption in Boston, it might be a better option to check out 2005's The Departed which presents the same kind of story but does it lot more efficiently. The screenplay by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth was so confusing that I had to literally use a scorecard to try and keep track of who was who. I have gotten into the habit of putting up the IMDB page of a movie behind the movie while I'm watching in case I want to know the name of an actor or the name of a character or other minor details. I found myself clicking back to the IMDB page for this movie approximately every ten minutes because I was unable to keep track of who was who but it really didn't help.

As expected with films of this genre, there is a lot of stomach-churning violence here but that wasn't the thing I found unusual here. What I found unusual here was the unsettling number of cold-blooded murders that take place in this movie in broad daylight. This is not unheard of in mob movies, but it was very prevalent here. There was one murder that was committed a few yards away from some children behind a fence. I was also confused that the primary cat and mouse game of this story, the mission of detective John Connolly to bring down Whitey Bulger, actually ended up with Connolly getting arrested before Bulger did. As a natter of fact, we are informed during the film's lengthy epilogue that Bulger wasn't arrested until 2011 at the age of 81! Let's hear it for the justice system.

Scott Cooper, who directed Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace, assembled a first rate cast who work very hard at keeping this convoluted tale watchable. Johnny Depp is totally serious about being a believable Whitey Bulger, completely deglamming himself and bringing a surprising intensity to this performance. Joel Edgerton's John Connolly provides some explosive moments, but both actors are fighting the somewhat simplistic screenplay throughout. Benedict Cumberbatch, Rory Cochrane, Kevin Bacon, Peter Skarsgaard, and Corey Stoll work hard at keeping thankless roles viable and I liked Tom Holken borg's music, but this one never engaged me the way it should have.



Lullaby of Broadway
An enchanting star turn from Doris Day, a veteran supporting cast, and a score rich with Tin Pan Alley classics make the 1951 Warner Brothers confection Lullaby of Broadway a must-see for classic movie lovers.

Doris plays Melinda Howard, a showbiz hopeful who has been performing on a cruise ship for years, where she meets a charming Broadway hoofer named Tom Farnham (Gene Nelson), who is returning to the states to star in a new Broadway show. Melinda is planning a return to the states as well, to visit her mother, Jessica, who she thinks is a big Broadway star. Upon arriving at the address where her mother has been mailing letters, Melinda learns that the house belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Hubbell, a wealthy owner of a beer company who are also the money behind Tom's new show.

It is soon revealed that the great Jessica Howard is now an alcoholic singing in a dive bar in Greenwich Village and a good friend of the Hubbell's butler, who used to perform with Jessica. The Hubbells take Melinda in and try their best to keep Melinda from finding out about her mother. They distract her by giving her a part in Tom's show but Melinda's blossoming romance with Tom gets complicated when he thinks she is seeing Mr. Hubbell, a man old enough to be her grandfather.

Earl Baldwin's screenplay comprised of classic musical comedy misunderstandings never gets in the way of some really terrific musical numbers that we never have to wait too long for. I complained in my review of Presenting Lily Mars that I had to wait 30 minutes to hear Judy Garland sing, but no waiting here...the second the credits were over, we were treated to Doris, glamorously clad in a men's tuxedo, belting out the title tune.

I loved the terrific songs that were utilized in this musical, most of which were not written for this film, but that's OK. Doris and company treat us to standards like "Just One of Those Things", "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone", "Zing Went the Strings of My Heart", and "In a Shanty in old Shanty Town". I also loved a duet performed by Billy DeWolfe and Anne Triola called "You're Dependable."

As always, Day is a delight and Gene Nelson is endlessly charming and very light on his feet (though his singing his dubbed by Hal Derwin). SZ "Cuddles" Sakall was adorable as Mr. Hubbell and Florence Bates was fun as his wife. DeWolfe stole every scene he was in and Gladys George was absolutely fabulous as Doris' pitiful mother. David Butler's direction is a little pedestrian but with this cast and those songs, you don't really notice.



Lovers and Other Strangers
A surprisingly clever screenplay and a terrific ensemble cast are the best things about a slightly dated comedy from 1970 called Lovers and Other Strangers that looks at marriage, sex, and relationships in a realistic yet always humorous way.

Mike and Susan are preparing to be married even though they are already living together. This comedy follows multiple mini-dramas that are erupting among Mike and Susan's families and several of them bubble to the surface during the actual wedding ceremony. While Mike's parents are excited about his wedding, they are also upset by the news rthat Mike's brother, Richie, is getting ready to divorce his wife, Joan. Jerry is Mike's sex-crazed best man who spends the entire movie trying to get Susan's cousin, Brenda, into bed. We also learn that Susan's dad has been having an affair for years, stringing his mistress along regarding divorcing Susan's mom. We also meet Susan's older sister, Wilma, who is having issues with her husband, Johnny, about the roles of men and women in marriage.

This movie is the film version of a play written by the late Joseph Bologna and his wife, Renee Taylor that is mounted by director Cy Howard in the form of vignettes, little scenes from this marriage where even though it is Mike and Susan's wedding is the hook upon which the story unfolds, the unfolding that occurs here is of several different stories that don't always deal directly with Mike and Susan, but Bologna and Taylor's story never forgets Mike and Susan either...I love when, the night before the wedding, Mike and Susan decide to check into a motel as husband and wife, taking that superstition about the bride and groom being together the night before their wedding and throwing out the cinematic window.

Howard and Bologna have assembled a solid cast of movie veterans to pull off a lot of the roles in this movie. Richard Castellano and Beatrice Arthur are very funny as Mike and Richie's parents and Bob Dishy had me on the floor as Jerry the sex maniac. Anne Meara and Harry Guardino are well-matched as Wilma and Johnny. Oscar winner Gig Young is absolutely brilliant as the unapologetic father of the bride, who refuses to give up his wife or his mistress. Young completely invests in this character who, if the truth be told, is kind of a jackass. And making her film debut as Richie's wife, Joan, is future Oscar winner Diane Keaton, who has some very amusing moments with Richie's parents. Michael Brandon and Bonnie Bedelia are also very sweet as Mike and Susan

The film earned Bologna and Taylor an Oscar nomination for their screenplay as did Castellano's classically Italian dad, reprising his role from the Broadway play. The film actually won the Oscar for Song of the Year for a song called "For All We Know", which would eventually become a top 40 hit for Richard and Karen Carpenter. Set direction and editing also deserve a shout out, but a still funny screenplay and a cast that knew exactly what to do with it are what make this almost 50-year old comedy still funny.



The China Syndrome
Taut direction, a topical story, and a perfect cast help to make The China Syndrome, a superior nail-biter from 1979 that earned four Oscar nominations and had me glued to the screen.

Kimberly Wells is a reporter at a California television station who has been relegated to fluff pieces until a series of reports regarding alternative energy sources leads Kimberly and her cameraman Richard to the Ventana Power Plant, where they actually witness something they refer to as an "accident" that was not supposed to happen but Richard got it on film anyway. Meanwhile, a shift supervisor at the plant named Jack Godell discovers that this accident was not really an accident and that the state is being put in serious danger, but no one believes him, so Godell feels he cannot tow the company line as instructed and takes matters into his own hand to warn Californians of the danger they might be in.

Primary credit for the success of this contemporary thriller has to go to director James Bridges, who creates an unerring atmosphere of suspense that keeps the viewer at the edge of their seats as they try to figure out exactly what's going on here, who's right, and the exact scope of the danger that is at the center of the proceedings. The viewer is initially led to believe that there isn't really danger involved here because fluff reporter Kimberly Wells is the one trying to get to the truth, but near the beginning of the second act, the story focuses on Jack's investigation into the accident and, after his viewing of a special group of X-rays, we realize that Jack is probably right but we can't figure out why none of his co-workers or superiors are listening to him.

The Oscar-nominated screenplay by Bridges, Mike Gray, and TS Cook seamlessly blends a story of the dangers of nuclear power with stories of towing the corporate line as well as the story of a television reporter who wants to be taken more seriously and creates one story rich with nail-biting tension that reaches a zenith when Jack Godell feels the only way he can get anybody to listen to him is by taking the control at the plant by gunpoint and having Kimberly brought there to interview him. The actual interview where Jack tries to explain to the TV viewers what is going on at the plant is absolutely heartbreaking because even though he is having trouble finding the words to explain what is happening to laymen, we believe him and believe the danger.

Jack Lemmon delivers the performance of his career as Jack Godell, a powerhouse turn that earned him a fifth Oscar nomination for Outstanding Leading Actor. Fonda was also nominated for her surprisingly rich Kimberly Wells, a performance that belies the glamorous look that Fonda sports here, that fits the character as we meet her but maybe not the woman she becomes by the time the end credits roll. This is also another one of those films that benefits from virtually no musical score...except for a Stephen Bishop song during the opening credits and one scene in a crowded bar, the film has no music and you never miss it. More than anything, this film is a testament to the talent of Bridges, doing the strongest work of his hit and miss career.



Office Space
Anyone who has ever worked in an office will find something they can relate to in 1999's Office Space, a farcical look at office life that seems to be sort of a cinematic companion to the Johnny Paycheck song "Take this Job and Shove It" and has achieved almost cult status over the years.

Peter, Michael, and Samir are three buddies who work at a software company called Initech who spend a lot of time complaining about how much they hate their jobs until a pair of efficiency experts arrive to trim the fat off the payroll. They fire Michael and Samir, but they find Peter's I-don't-give-a-damn attitude refreshing and promptly promote him. Not happy about his buddies being canned, Peter teams with his buddies to pull off an elaborate plan to rip the company off.

Mike Judge, the creative force behind Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill does show a flair with live action characters as well. What this film nails better than anything else is those mundane little things about working in an office that we all hate...that one cheery female co-worker who is never in a bad mood, the white hot hate that we've all had for a copy machine at sometime in our life, and that office birthday cake that always runs out before we get a piece.

Best of all, Judge gives us that slimeball boss who acts so smooth and so slick that he makes everything he does sound so innocent and, most importantly, that it is what is best for us and Judge cast this role perfectly with the endlessly versatile Gary Cole, creating one of the most annoying movie bosses I have ever seen. There are some fantasy touches that Judge brings to the story that don't always work, but I think that's because never commits completely to whether or not this story if a farce or a straight story, but it does deliver the laughs during the waffling. I loved the scene where the guys steal the copier on their last day and take it to a field and destroy it, effectively shot in slow motion.

Ron Livingston is charming as Peter and Jennifer Aniston made an impression in one of her earliest movie roles as his romantic interest. Deidrich Bader was also fun as Peter's roommate. John McGinley and Paul Willson garnered laughs as the efficiency experts, but Stephen Root does eventually wear on the nerves as a nerdy employee who was laid off four years ago but doesn't realize it and, for some reason, nobody will tell him. I also liked the fact that most of the soundtrack consisted of rap music but there was only one black character with a speaking part in the whole movie. Definitely an acquired taste, but I found myself laughing in spite of myself.



The Five Pennies
Danny Kaye plays it relatively straight in 1959's The Five Pennies. a sparkling musical biopic that traces the career of famed jazz cornet player Red Nichols, who would eventually become a pioneer in the musical genre known as Dixieland.

It's New York City during the Roaring 20's where Red is seen getting a job with Will Paradise's band but eventually quits because he wants to have his own band and play his own kind of music. The story follows the typical biopic route as red meets and marries a pretty band singer (Barbara Bel Geddes) who supports Red's passion in pursuing the career he wants, which finds Red playing with people like Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, and Artie Shaw, but eventually Red forms his own band called Red Nichols and the Five Pennies. Just as they start achieving success, Red decides to give up his career when his daughter, Dorothy, is stricken with polio.

Director and co-screenwriter Melville Shavelson has mounted a lavish and simultaneously intimate look at a musician whose name may not be familiar but people have heard his music for almost an entire century without realizing it. Shavelson's story goes most of the typical directions that the 1950's Hollywood biopics go, but this one stands out due to a screenplay that has a little meat on its bones and a leading man stepping a little bit out of his comfort zone as an actor.

Danny Kaye was definitely an unconventional choice for the leading role in this story, but this is definitely a case of casting against type that worked. Kaye does get some opportunities to clown during the opening act. I was thoroughly amused with the scenes during the opening act where Paradise's band was doing a lot of work on the radio and Nichols kept screwing things up, mostly out of boredom with what he was doing. These scenes are definitely the Danny Kaye we are accustomed to seeing, but as the story takes a serious turn later, Kaye proves to be up to the challenge.

The film is rich with some terrific jazz and dixieland music, headed mostly by the real Red Nichols, who is actually playing all of Danny Kaye's cornet solos. The take on "Battle Hymn of the Republic" totally had my toes tapping and I also loved "Dixieland Lullaby" performed on the bus by Kaye and Bel Geddes (Bel Geddes singing was dubbed). The film also features Nichols' take on standards like "Good Night Sleep Tight" and "After You've Gone." The music is presented with a great deal of care and never sounds canned.

Danny Kaye proved himself to be an actor of substance with this role and was well-matched by Bel Geddes, who was a vivacious and intelligent leading lady who gave her role a substance that wasn't in the screenplay. Harry Guardino was terrific as one of the Five Pennies and no 1950's movie featuring jazz trumpeting would be complete without a cameo from Louis Armstrong. And that is a very young Tuesday Weld, in one of her first significant film roles, playing Red's teenage daughter, Dorothy. A special and unexpected surprise, a notch above the average biopic.



Love, Gilda
She was the first person that Lorne Michaels cast as a Not Ready for Prime Time Player on SNL. a few years later, she was doing a one woman show on Broadway, which was followed soon by movies and a brief but loving marriage to one of the biggest movie stars on the planet at the time before being taken from us. The life and career of Gilda Radner is lovingly and thoughtfully presented in a 2018 documentary called Love, Gilda which actually did something a lot of star documentaries don't...taught me things about the subject I didn't already know.

In my review of Leslie Caron: The Reluctant Star, I mentioned how I enjoyed the fact that there was no offscreen narration and that the star was allowed to tell her own story. Since the subject here has been gone for so long, I knew there was no way Gilda could be telling her own story, but I turned out to be partly wrong. Gilda's story does feature some narration from the star herself and the rest of the narration is pretty much onscreen, utilizing a journal of Gilda's as a hook and having stars like Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy, and Bill Hader reading from it. It was so much fun watching these stars reading from this journal like it was the Bible. Poehler even confesses that just about every character she ever did on SNL was based on something that she saw Gilda do.

Prior to this, the only look at this star's life was a mediocre TV movie from 2002 called Gilda Radner: It's Always Something which didn't even scratch the surface of who Gilda was. The opening moments regarding Gilda's childhood are narrated by the star herself, talking about her hectic childhood, the majority of which she spent with her grandmother, whom she affectionately referred to as "Dibby". We also learned that Dibby was the inspiration for one of Gilda's first SNL characters, Emily Latella. As expected, we learned how devastated she was about the death of her dad and how she channeled her grief into her comedy. Of course, this channeling manifested itself in other way, in particular, Gilda's love affair with food that controlled a lot of her childhood.

As I watched this documentary, I kept seeing a lot of comparisons between Gilda and another iconic superstar who was taken from us too soon, namely Judy Garland. Both ladies had disruptive childhoods that led to eating disorders and a lot of unhappiness offstage, but they never brought any of it onstage. These ladies were considered supremely talented, were always able to translate their talent into ratings and box office receipts. Everybody loved them and wanted to be them or be with them. And as loved as they were, neither of them ever really felt loved, which lead to a lot of unhealthy relationships with men that both ladies knew were unhealthy but didn't care.

It was fun watching her beginnings in Canadian theater, particularly the first Canadian company of the musical Godspell and her on and off romance with one of her co-stars, Martin Short, a relationship I had never heard about prior to this documentary. The film touches briefly on her unhealthy marriage to SNL musician GE Smith as well as just about every male member of the Second City comedy troupe. Of course, we also get to look at her brief fairy tale romance with Gene Wilder that ended with her passing from ovarian cancer.

The film also offers commentary along the way from Laraine Newman, Paul Shaffer, who was the musical director of Godspell and her Broadway show, Chevy Chase, SNL writers Alan Zweibel, Anne Beatts, and Rosie Shuster, and , naturally, Lorne Michaels. As sad as many parts of this film was, I still found myself laughing out loud at a lot of the memorable comedy that this gifted performer produced in such a short time. For fans of the performer, an absolute must.



Forever Darling
During the hiatus before the final season of I Love Lucy, MGM decided to cash in on Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz' success with a pleasant but forgettable comedy called Forver Darling that rides only so far on the chemistry of its stars.

Susan and Lorenzo Vega have been married for five years and their marriage is starting to fall into a rut as Lorenzo's work inventing a new insectacide begins monopolizing all of his time.. One night after a horrible fight, Susan is visited by a guardian angel (James Mason) who suggests that the way for Susan to put the spark back in her marriage is to learn more about Lorenzo's work, so she decides to accompany him on a camping trip where he will field test the insectacide.

This film was not nearly as good as the Arnaz' previous film together The Long Long Trailer and I think a lot of the problems lie in Helen Deutsch's screenplay that tries to be a little more sophisticated than what we're used to from Lucy and Desi. The opening scene at the Vega dinner table was something akin to Noel Coward, which was really foreign territory for our stars, especially Mr. Arnaz. Not to mention this whole idea that the only way for a woman to make her marriage work is to completely make her life about her husband. I did like the fact that we were let in on the joke regarding the guardian angel...apparently guardian angels look like who we want them to look like and I loved Lucy and Mason's reaction to that.

The film starts with a cute prologue of scenes documenting the first five years of the Vega marriage and then limps a little too quietly until it gets to the camping trip and that's where we get to the Lucy and Desi we're accustomed too, but this doesn't happen until the third act and getting to that third act was a bit of a chore.

Don't get me wrong, the still inexplicable chemistry between Lucy and Desi is still there, even though it was hard to get behind Desi playing some kind of important scientist. Mason's role as the guardian angel was thankless, but I loved Louis Calhern as Lucy's father and Natalie Schaefer is also fun as Susan's cousin. There's even an early appearance by Nancy Kulp (The Beverly Hillbillies) as the Vega's maid., but the film kind of lumbers along and is nothing really special. Love that title song though.



A Star is Born (2018)
I didn't think anything fresh could be brought to this story that has already been brought to the screen in 1937, 1954, and 1976 but Bradley Cooper has scored a major triumph with his 2018 re-thinking of A Star is Born that takes this story back to its essence...a love story, pure and simple.

For those who have never seen any of the previous versions of this story, in 1937 and 1954, a movie star named Norman Maine whose career is on the decline due to his alcoholism meets an aspiring actress named Esther Blodgett and helps her become a movie star named Vicki Lester. But when Norman's drinking starts affecting Vicki's career, Norman realizes that he must let Vicki go and there's only one way he can do it. In the 1976 version, the lead characters become musicians instead of movie stars, as they did in this new version.

Cooper plays Jackson Maine, a burnt out rock and roller who meets an aspiring singer named Ally (Lady Gaga) falls in love with her on sight and recognizes her talent and uses the little juice he has left in the business to springboard her career. Unfortunately, jealousy and resentment surface as Ally becomes a bigger star than Jackson was, but they marry anyway. Eventually, Jackson's drunken escapades start to harm Ally's career but she refuses to give up on Jackson, so Jackson forces her to.

I don't even know where to start here, because I'm still in shock that I enjoyed this film as much as I did. Bradley Cooper is to be applauded and remembered at award season for bringing something new to this classic story that simultaneously respects an original story that is 81 years old. As director and co-screenwriter, Cooper is very careful to bring us the story that we know and expect but tweaks it just enough to give the story a fresh and glorious breath. What I love about this version is that it concentrates less on the show business aspect of the story and more on the love story. Watch the first scene where Jackson watches Ally sing for the first time...he falls in love with her at first sight first and notices her talent second.

Remember in the '54 and '76 versions when the leading man discovers the leading lady in a dingy little nightclub? In this version, Ally is actually discovered singing in a drag bar. I loved that. The most famous line in three previous versions of the story is lovingly recreated, not once, but twice here. Cooper even brings a shocking addition to the famous scene where Jackson ruins the Grammy Awards for his wife.

The other thing I loved about this version of the story that is barely touched on in the '54 and '76 version is that the characters of Ally and Jackson actually have families who have had a profound effect on the paths their lives have taken. As a matter of fact as this film opens, Ally is still living with her dad, beautifully played by Andrew Dice Clay and watching their mutual respect for each other was a joy. Jackson's family is only revealed through backstory but it does surface in one powerful scene with Jackson's manager (Sam Elliott).

The music for this film, almost exclusively composed by Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, is a refreshing melange of contemporary soft rock and funky dance tunes. I especially loved "Shallow", "Always Remember Us This Way" and "I'll Never Love Again". And what can be said about the vocal miracle that is Lady Gaga that hasn't been already said? Not since Barbra Streisand have I heard such vocal pyrotechnics in a movie. I was even blown way by her rendition of "La Vie En Rose". Gaga also proves to be a promising actress and I wouldn't be shocked if she and Elliott receive Oscar nominations. I don't know about lead actor, but I definitely see Cooper snagging a nomination for his direction. This film proves that Cooper may have a new career behind the camera.



Good News
The MGM Dream Factory had one of their biggest smashes with a zingy musical called Good News that features some wonderful songs, choreography, and the MGM gloss at its zenith.

It's the Roaring 20's at a fictional college called Tait where we meet Tommy (Peter Lawford) the captain of the football team who all the girls are crazy about except for golddigger Pat McClellan (Patricia Marshall) who only has eyes for the wealthy Peter Van Dyne (Robert Strickland). Tommy seeks out Connie (June Allyson), a serious student working her way through college in the library, to help him with his French homework. Tommy and Connie agree to attend prom together until Connie's best friend, Babe (Joan McCracken) convinces Pat that Tommy is the bee's knees and when she throws herself at him, he asks her to prom, forgetting all about Connie.

Based on a Broadway musical that a premiered way back in 1927, this engaging and seriously entertaining musical had me consistently grinning throughout the running time. This is what MGM musicals were all about...a story that was just simple enough that it didn't get in the way of star gazing and some of the best song and dance numbers mounted against perfect backdrops and the classic musical comedy misunderstandings that keep these movies humming are all neatly wrapped up in about an hour and a half.

The classic score by the writing team of De Sylva, Brown, and Henderson is effectively showcased here. Highlights included "Be a Ladies Man", a ditty extolling the joys of being big man on campus that featured Lawford and a very early film appearance by the Velvet Fog, Mel Torme; "Lucky in Love", a group number at a party featuring Allyson and Torme; "The Best Things in Life are Free" performed by Allyson and Torme in separate scenes, and two mammoth production numbers, "Pass that Peace Pipe" which features the incredible McCracken center stage. My only exposure to her prior to this had been as the first wife of dance icon Bob Fosse and I can definitely see his influence in her dance style, and, of course, "The Varsity Drag", the mammoth finale that evoked visions of Busby Berkeley. Sadly, I was unable to find out who choreographed this movie because the inventive choreography deserves to be credited. But if the truth be told, my favorite number in the movie was a duet with Allyson and Lawford called "The French Lesson" where Allyson teaches Lawford how to say several things in French. I read somewhere that before this number was shot, Lawford had to teach Allyson the French because he was the one who was fluent in French. Lawford's French accent is flawless.

Even though he complained about having to make this movie during the narration of That's Entertainment!, Lawford is a charming leading man here. Allyson was fine but I must confess that while watching this film, I kept picturing Judy Garland playing Connie and can't begin to imagine how amazing this movie would have been with her in the role, but the mid 40's were a pretty stormy period in Garland's life and if she had been cast in this, it probably never would have been completed. It's no Singin in the Rain, but MGM musical fans will not be disappointed.



A Child is Waiting
Focused direction, an emotionally charged story, and affecting performances combine to make 1963's A Child is Waiting a special motion picture experience that is for someone looking for a little meat on the bones of their entertainment.

The film stars Burt Lancaster as Dr. Matthew Clark, the head of State facility called the Crawthorne State Training Institute, a boarding school for developmentally disabled children who finds himself butting heads with a new teacher he has just hired named Jean Hansen (Judy Garland) who finds herself connecting with a boy named Reuben and is confused when Clark refuses to let her talk to the boy's mother. We also get to meet Reuben's parents (Gena Rowlands, Steven Hill) and learned how their struggles dealing with Reuben led to Crawthorne.

More than anything, this film is a tribute to the talent of director John Cassavetes, who had only directed two other feature films before tackling this mammoth assignment. This film involved Cassavetes teaching actually mentally challenged children and adults how to be movie actors and he actually accomplishes this. Never during the course of this film does it feel like Cassavetes was not in complete control of everything that happens on the screen here and he must be applauded for that.

I must also applaud the structure of Abby Mann's screenplay. Mann, who wrote the screenplay for 1961 Best Picture nominee Judgement at Nuremberg opens the story with us watching Reuben's arrival at the school, then moves to the hiring of Jean and her connection to Reuben and when we find out that Clark doesn't want Jean contacting Reuben's mom, the story then flashes back to Reuben's parents, a few months after his birth and the pain, shame, and guilt that led to their eventual very painful decision to take Reuben to Crawthorne. The screenplay also creates very interesting central characters in the story...sometimes Clark comes off as cold and insensitive and why he doesn't want Reuben's mother seeing him is never really made clear, but he is painted overall as wanting what's best for these children. We love Jean until she wants to quit because she thinks she can't reach Reuben while she has practically ignored the rest of the kids. This is serious stuff here and, if caught in the right mood, will run roughshod with your emotions.

Lancaster effortlessly walks the line between sensitive and icy as Clark and Garland offers another of those heartbreaking performances that dominated her later career. She would only make one more film after this one. Cassavetes makes wife Gena Rowlands look great and Steven Hill really impresses as the dad. It's been so interesting the last couple of years to learn that Hill had a career before he became Adam Schiff on Law & Order. Young Bruce Ritchey is also terrific as Reuben. And if you don't blink, you might catch Billy Mumy in one scene, who would later have his 15 minutes on TV's Lost in Space as Will Robinson. An emotionally charged cinematic experience that will stick to you.



Sorry to Bother You
Boots Riley proves to be a promising filmmaker with a richly imaginative 2018 cinematic acid trip called Sorry to Bother You which starts off as a near brilliant social satire but veers off into a shocking and unexpected direction that seems like a separate film that sends some disturbing messages, but it's never boring.

It is an alternate universe of present day Oakland, California where we meet Cassius Green, an unemployed black guy who lives in his uncle's garage with his girlfriend, a loopy performance artist and is four months behind in his rent. Cassius gets a job as a telemarketer at a company called Regalview where he struggles until a veteran co-worker in the next cubicle suggests that he will make more sales if he uses a "white voice." The advice works and Cassius gets promoted while his co-workers prepare to go on strike for more money.

Cassius begin working on the second floor of Regalview, where he becomes what is known as a Power Caller. It is revealed that the power callers on the second floor are working specifically for one client, an international cult-like conglomerate called WorryFree who have been accused of contemporary slavery and brought endless riches to their charismatic leader Steve Lift.

Riley's screenplay starts off quite brilliantly as a somewhat angry satire implying that the only way black men can survive in a white man's world is by sounding white and pretending to be white. I felt this to be a very clever premise for a film since there is an element of truth in it, but right around the halfway point of the film, the story veers off into a completely unexpected direction, moving in the direction of a science fiction adventure as we learn the truth about WorryFree and Steve Lift's agenda, and more importantly, how Cassius is unable to stop it. The screenplay does have a hole or two that I couldn't wrap my head around, most specifically, why is it that this "white voice" thing only worked for Cassius and no one else? Not even the guy who gave him the advice. I was also bothered by the fact that the white voice for Cassius and for other characters, were provided by white actors. The story might have had a little more legitimacy if these black actors could have come up with their own white voices.

Riley's story does display unlimited imagination in terms of storytelling...I love the opening scenes of Cassius' first few calls where Cassius and his callers are brought face to face through a clever breaking of the 4th wall that never allows us to forget we're watching a movie, thanks to Riley's imaginative camera and his film editor, Terel Gibson. Lakeith Stanfield gives a star-making performance as Cassius and I also loved Armie Hammer, so memorable last year in Call Me By Your Name as Steve Lift. The film gets an "A" for originality and imagination, I just think Boots Riley let the story get a little out of control.



Stepping Out
It's not a very good movie, but the presence of Oscar winner Liza Minnelli at the center of the proceedings might make a 1991 film called Stepping Out worth a look.

Minnelli plays Mavis Turner, a former Broadway dancer who now lives in Buffalo and teaches a tap class in the basement of a church to a disparate group of dance amateurs. Mavis finds a renewed passion and a new motivation for her students when her group is asked to perform in an important charity event.

Mavis' students include a snotty Brit neat freak (Julie Walters), the owner of a fashion boutique (Ellen Greene), a big black lady (Carol Woods), a woman with a terminal sinus condition (Andrea Martin), and one guy (Bill Irwin). The story provides a peak into these folks individual lives as they prepare for the big show. We are also privy to issues in Mavis' private life, mostly courtesy of her slimy musician boyfriend (Luke Reilly).

This film is actually based on a play by Richard Harris (not the actor) who was allowed to do his own screenplay for all the good it does. It's just not a very interesting story filled with not very interesting characters. We're supposed to be moved by a tentative romance that seems to develop between Irwin's character and a woman named Andy (Sheila McCarthy) who is apparently being physically abused at home, but we just don't care. Not to mention the Julie Walters character who is beyond annoying. Harris' screenplay attempts to show us what brings these people to a church basement once a week to learn how to do a time step, but we just don't care.

The film is also a sad reminder as to what a wonderful performer Liza Minnelli used to be. This thankless role does give her a couple of opportunities to shine, but they just make you want to look at a DVD of Cabaret. Irwin's rubbery, Jim Carrey-like body provides some fun moments and there's a scene stealing turn from the late Shelley Winters as the grumpy rehearsal pianist. Peter Matz, who was music director for The carol Burnett Show, provides a perfect musical background and the title finale is actually very special, but the 90 minutes we have to sit through to get there are, at times, snore-inducing. What a shame.



Parental Guidance
The professionalism of Billy Crystal and Bette Midler in the starring roles almost make 2012's Parental Guidance worth the time, but the film suffers from a juvenile screenplay and some annoying characters, not to mention that it seemed 17 hours long.

The stars play a recently fired minor league baseball announcer and his wife who have been asked by their daughter (Marisa Tomei) to watch their grandchildren while she accompanies her husband on a business trip. Upon arrival, Artie and Diane are distressed to discover that they are "the other grandparents" and are determined to change that. Unfortunately, their daughter and her husband (Tom Everett Scott) are these New Age-y kind of parents who don't believe in disciplining their children, completely foreign territory for Artie and Diane.

This movie is such a shame because the way the story is set up, the natural inclination is to blame Crystal and Midler, but it is so not their fault. I'm pretty sure the primary culprit here is a kind of juvenile and old school screenplay (which even though he doesn't receive onscreen credit, I believe Crystal had some input) that is really not sure what demographic it is trying to reach. We have a story that focuses on three really obnoxious kids trying to stretch their wings with their parents out of town and on the other side, we've got Artie Decker, an old school minor league baseball announcer who, during the scene where he gets fired, when asked if he tweets replies, "Sure, I'll make any noise you want!". And it just goes downhill from there.

The other problem is these grandchildren that Crystal and Midler are trying to win over. They're just not the worth the trouble. Five minutes after they've walked in the house, the youngest spraying water on his grandfather's crouch. It is also revealed that he has an imaginary friend, a kangaroo named Carl? Seriously? I can't remember the last time I saw a kid with an imaginary friend. The scenes where the kid goes ballistic because Carl has been "killed" and Carl's funeral are a serious waste of screentime. There's also a scene in a dingy restroom of a football stadium that's just embarrassing. And having the daughter's violin teacher be Russian just smacked of stereotype. I mean, they lived in Georgia, for God's sake.

Even the daughter's character is all over the place and we're never sure if we're supposed to like her or not. Her childhood resentments with her dad grow tiresome quickly and we just want her to give her parents a break. Crystal and Midler work very hard at keeping their heads above this muck, but they're doing some serious treading here to stay afloat. You just want to slap Marisa Tomei, but I actually liked Tom Everett Scott as the dad. Unless you're hardcore fans of Billy Crystal and Bette Midler, I'd give this one a pass.



Book Club
Star power, pure and simple. drives a 2018 comedy called Book Club, which features in its cast four Oscar winners and one five-time Emmy winner and the fact that all this talent can make a less than remarkable story seem fresh is no accident.

The film is about four life long female friends who still get together once a month for a book club and the profound changes that seem to occur when their new selection of the month is Fifty Shades of Gray. Vivian (Jane Fonda) is a wealthy hotel owner; Sharon (Candice Bergen) is a divorced federal judge who hasn't been on a date in 18 years; Diane (Diane Keaton) is the widowed mother of two grown daughters who think Mom is too old to take of herself; Carol (Mary Steenburgen) is a restaurant owner who hasn't had sex with her husband (Craig T.. Nelson) in six months.

Reading the book motivates Vivian to connect with an old flame (Don Johnson) and Sharon actually puts herself on a dating website and meets a charming tax attorney (Richard Dreyfuss). Diane is drawn into a whirlwind romance with a sexy airline pilot (Andy Garcia) and Carol decides to spice up her marriage with dance lessons and viagra.

Director and screenwriter Bill Holderman doesn't offer anything new that anyone who has ever seen an episode of The Golden Girls hasn't seen, but just about everything that happens here, no matter how mundane on the surface, looks fresh and funny because of the amazing cast that Holderman has gathered for this project and how he puts complete trust in this cast to deliver the goods and they deliver in spades. Holderman also mines the varied careers to bring new laughs to this story. I loved that we got to see Mary Steenburgen tap dance for the first time since her Oscar-winning performance in Melvin and Howard. The film does take a bit of a melancholy turn near the end of the second act, but bounces back for a satisfying finale.

Holderman employs handsome production values, but the cast is the thing here and they are absolutely first-rate, with standout work from Fonda (who looks AMAZING) and Keaton. Don Johnson creates a surprising chemistry with Fonda I didn't see coming. I love their scene in the diner where they share milkshakes. Ed Begley Jr. and Wallace Shawn have cute bits and yes, that is Alicia Silverstone of Clueless playing one of Keaton's daughters. Nothing extraordinary here, but stars as far as the eye can see and they make it worth your time.



Babes on Broadway
The third musical that Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland did together, 1941's Babes on Broadway features some wonderful songs, incredible Busby Berkeley choreography, but suffers due to dated elements and the fact that it goes on a little too long.

Rooney plays Tommy Williams, an aspiring Broadway star who is currently singing in a restaurant for tips with his two partners (Ray McDonald, Richard Quine) who meets the assistant to a theatrical producer (Fay Bainter) who tips them off to a big audition in the morning. He and another aspiring performer, Penny Morris (guess who) show up at the audition, which turns out to be a bust. Tommy and Penny decide to put their own show together, but in order to raise money for the show, they decide to throw a block party where they will perform highlights from the show and hopefully they will be able to raise enough money to perform the entire show in a real theater, but that's just the beginning of Tommy and Penny's troubles.

The story by Fred Hinkelhoffe is overly complicated as somehow the efforts to put on this show somehow get tangled up with efforts to allow a group of children to take a vacation in the country, not to mention the accustomed nod to the war, which was a staple in films released in 1941, but Mickey and Judy were such superstars at this time that nobody really cared.

The film is jam-packed with great songs including "Anything Can Happen in New York", "How About You?", "Hoe Down", "The Farmer in the Dell", "Bombshell in Brazil", and a slightly pretentious war anthem called "Chin Up, Cheerio, Carry On" and then there's the Dixieland medley utilized for the minstrel show finale, including a great solo for Judy called "Franklin D Roosevelt Jones." And Berkley's imaginative and complex staging of the musical numbers are just what you would expect from the master of photographing dance on film.

The chemistry between Mickey and Judy is enchanting and was there anyone else in Hollywood in 1941 who had the energy Mickey Rooney had? Watching the guy is exhausting at times, but never dull. And yes, the above mentioned Richard Quine is the same Richard Quine who went on to direct films like Bell Book and Candle and The Notorious Landlady. Ray McDonald also gets to give his tap shoes a workout. It goes on a little too long, and if the truth be told, the minstrel show was a little hard to take in 2018, but Judy and Mickey almost make it all bearable.



The Squid and the Whale
The creative force behind Margot at the Wedding really scored with his previous creation, a quirky and disturbing 2005 entry called The Squid and the Whale, an often-stomach-turning look at family dysfunction populated with some really despicable characters displaying really despicable behavior.

It's Brooklyn 1986 where we are introduced to Bernard and Joan Berkman, a college professor and writer and his wife, also a writer, who are the parents of moody high schooler Walt and the hypersensitive pre-teen Frank. We meet this family near the end of Bernard and Joan's marriage. They sit the boys down and quietly inform them that they are planning to separate but have worked out a schedule so that the boys will be able to spend time with both of their parents.

Of course, the scheduling becomes moot as in something rarely seen in stories like these, the boys take definitive sides. With the reveal of his mother's multiple affairs, Walt wants nothing to do with his mother and Frank really wants nothing do with his dad, with whom he feels he has nothing in common. As the boys eyes are opened to who their parents are and what a lie their marriage has been for years, they both begin acting out...Frank begins drinking and taking his discovery of masturbation to a disturbing level; Walt wants to perform a song in a talent show that someone else wrote and claim as his own and finds himself torn between the virginal Sophie and Lili a student of his dad's who actually moves in with him.

Noah Baumbach received an Oscar nomination for his blistering screenplay that takes no prisoners and leaves no one in this story undamaged. Baumbach's story is centered around a family with so many issues that they spend the majority of the running time trying to blame other people for. The shreds of Bernard and Joan's marriage come shining through in the opening scene in which they are playing tennis opposite each other with their sons as partners. Frank's lashing out regarding Philistines, what he considers people who have no appreciation of the arts, nor his disdain for athletes endear him to the viewer. Neither are we impressed when we moves into a run down house after leaving Joan and does nothing in terms of renovations or repairs.

Joan is no prize either...she never really offers any explanations to her sons regarding her cheating, though I'm not sure what she could say, but most of her likability quotient went out the window when she started sleeping with Frank's tennis coach. Despite all the intense unhappiness here, hope is offered as it becomes clear early on in the proceedings that Bernard has never really stopped loving Joan, giving the viewer glimmer of hope, but just the faintest glimmer.

As a director, Baumbach triumphs through the performances he pulls from his hand-picked cast...Jeff Daniels is explosive and intense as Bernard and Laura Linney's hot mess Joan never fails to engage us. Jesse Eisenberg, an actor who has shown a gift for playing unlikable characters, nails another one in the sometimes slimey Walt and Owen Kline (real life son of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates) lights up the screen as Frank. I also loved William Baldwin as the skeevy tennis coach and Oscar winner Anna Paquin as the trampy Lili. Baumbach seems to have had a bigger budget here than he did for Margot at the Wedding as production values here are top-notch...the film is beautifully photographed and I loved the quirky music, which actually included a song from Schoolhouse Rock. It's a little disturbing, but Baumbach has created riveting screen entertainment here.