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You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
Mamma Mia! (Phyllida Lloyd, 2008)



This is a silly, yet intoxicating and gorgeous-looking musical, built around the songs of Swedish supergroup ABBA. Set in beautiful Greece, it tells the story of 20-year-old Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) who invites three older men to her wedding without telling her mother Donna (Meryl Streep). The reason is that any of the three, Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Harry (Colin Firth) or Bob (Stellan Skarsgård), could be her father and most definitely, one of them is. Needless to say, when Donna finds out, she's not happy, but that doesn't stop everybody from singing and dancing all over the entire movie.

It doesn't really matter if you're an ABBA fanatic or can't tell the difference between them and AC/DC. The film is bright, cute, and just a lot of fun. I'll admit that the time frame of the film seems to defy logic, but who needs logic when you have this much fun on hand? The actors do their best at singing although it's obvious that a few are dubbed, but Meryl Streep and her two best buddies (played by Christine Baranski and Julie Walters - I was getting a Shirley Valentine flashback from the latter) really let it all hang out during their musical numbers. And PLEASE, quit acting like there is something wrong with musicals and people who enjoy musicals. Well, to be honest, I'm not specifically discussing anybody here, but it always seems like when you mention musicals that it turns off all the "macho guys"; you know, the ones who want to go kill things in their videogames or want to watch their video-game-based movies. Those are what real guys enjoy! Sorry about that. Just watch this movie and enjoy it if you can. Otherwise, watch what you enjoy. It's fine, and you don't need me to tell you so.

You mentioned that a few of the actors voices were dubbed. I thought they all did their own singing in this movie. Do you know whose voices were dubbed?



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985)




Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) is a bored housewife who vicariously finds romance following the newspaper personal ads of "Susan" and "Jim", so one day, Roberta decides to take a walk on the wild side and go into NYC, using the personal as her "map" to find out who this Susan is. Susan turns out to be Madonna, and after following her around the streets for a bit, Roberta sees her swap her jacket for some boots at a clothing store. Roberta immediately buys the jacket, and crazy things start to happen from here on in. Jim (Robert Joy) gets worried when Susan doesn't show for their assignation, so he enlists the help of his projectionist friend Dez (Aidan Quinn) to try to find out what happened to her. Dez finds Roberta, just after she's been mugged, and since she's wearing Susan's jacket and can't seem to remember who she is because of the attack, Dez assumes she's Susan. But, these rough guys are still after them and the only clue to why seems to be a key inside the pocket of Susan's jacket.

This is an indie film, and although today people seem to look down upon it as some sort of Madonna hype movie, she is very good in the film but certainly not the main character. It continues to be an offbeat romantic comedy thriller with a few allusions to character transferral, but it's honestly very unpretentious. I'm sorry, Used Future, but I knew you had a question concerning a movie shown early on in the film, but I waited until after watching it to see what the question was. I couldn't especially make out that film shown in the theatre, but I'm prepared for the next time it comes on.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Johnny Be Good (Bud Smith, 1988)




Wow! It actually took me 20 years to watch this pathetic, critically-reviled and idiotic film, but I've finally got it under my belt. Yes, this film is amateurish, loud, obnoxious, mostly unfunny and ultra-clichéd, but what's up with that rating? This is the story of how high school quaterback Johnny Walker (Anthony Michael Hall) gets approached by every college's scumbag recruiter to go to their school, even though in the lone football scene at the beginning of the flick, he appears to not even know HOW to play football. His best friend/teammate Leo (Robert Downey, Jr.) wants to go along on his coattails, as does his punk coach Wayne Hisler (snakey Paul Gleason, reprising the persona of his punk principal in The Breakfast Club). Johnny's gorgeous girlfriend Georgia (Uma Thurman) is also concerned about where he'll end up in college. OK, I just went over that so you can see what we have going on here. Even though all the supporting characters are loud-mouthed jerks, the leading cast produces some fond memories of far-better films and actually allows a modest amount of entertainment to seep into this trashy flick. Hall and Downey have good chemistry, and 17-year-old Thurman, in her debut, is quite a knockout. Throw in plenty of swearing, males acting like little babies, healthy teenage female flesh, and the good guys kicking the bad guys' asses, and I was able to give it a non-camp rating of what's above. Well, maybe that rating includes some camp value, but for the people who would enjoy watching this crap classic, what difference does it make?



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock, 1944)




Lifeboat begins in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, just after a freighter is sunk by and in turn sinks a German U-Boat. The only survivor in the lifeboat is spoiled foreign correspondent Connie (Tallulah Bankhead) who is typing a story about the incident, but slowly, more survivors come across and into the lifeboat, and all but one is from the sunken freighter. The last survivor is Willy (Walter Slezak), a German from the U-Boat. The survivors make up a cross section of ethnicities, so the film turns into an interesting character study centering around the ethics of class and war. Willy turns out to be the most-knowledgeable seaman aboard, and reluctantly the others allow him to take charge of setting a heading for Bermuda.

Hitchcock uses John Steinbeck's story as a showcase for him to make one of his patented claustrophobic, one-set films. (Others he would later make include Rope, Dial M For Murder and Rear Window.) Hitch builds suspense by showing the dangers of the sea (weather, sharks) and by the fact that there is just not enough food or water for everyone to be able to survive the long voyage to Bermuda. One by one, each character has a big scene, but Willy seems to just be stronger and brighter than the other characters. It's this last point which caused a backlash against the film. Even though Lifeboat was released to critical praise and big box office in its limited opening engagements, after a brief time, a few columnists decided that somehow the film celebrated the Nazi "Superman", and 20th Century Fox chief Darryl Zanuck decided to not fully release the film due to fear of it sullying his reputation. That's actually pretty shocking because you don't especially consider the WWII era as some kind of "politically-correct" age, and Lifeboat, after all, is a gung ho, pro-Allies film
.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Nothing But the Night (Peter Sasdy, 1973)




This is the umpteenth teaming of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and it was actually made under the banner of Lee's own production company. It's an offbeat and relatively well-made mystery about a strange little girl who seems to have memories of an accident which doesn't correlate to the physical evidence concerning the event. She also lives at an orphan home on a remote island, and the trustees of that home have been dying under mysterious circumstances lately, leading a retired policeman (Lee) to enlist the aid of his doctor friend (Cushing) in helping him try to prove there is a murderous conspiracy afoot. Although there are many more details and characters, they're not especially worth mentioning right now. The first half of the film takes place in an urban hospital and the second half is set on that island orphanage. There is a big "plot twist" at the end which is OK, but the chief problem with the film is that it has an underdeveloped script. Director Sasdy uses lots of location work to try to disguise the fact that the film is repetitious and drawn out. As it is, it would have worked better as a "Twilight Zone" episode, albeit a rather weak one. It does have some unintentional humor near the end when the girl's mother (Diana Dors) seems to spend an eternity creeping and crawling around the island trying to get to her daughter, apparently just to pad out the running time. It's not really all that bad, but it's not exactly a horror film; at least not compared to something like Rosemary's Baby.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
W. (Oliver Stone, 2008)




Oliver Stone leaves behind his usual frenetic, free-wheeling style to tell the story of President George W. Bush's life from two perspectives, both surprisingly low-key and empathetic to the man. Of course, Josh Brolin's total immersion into the Bush persona makes it seem much smoother than it otherwise would have been. Bush is seen shortly after 9/11 with his cabinet and advisors planning on how to fight his war on terror. At the same time, the film begins a series of flashbacks which begin in 1966 when Bush was a pledge at a fraternity at Yale. The younger Bush is shown to be a pleasure-loving, hard-drinking young man who constantly disappoints his father (James Cromwell) while seeking to find his place in the world. The older W. is shown to be a sincere individual who isn't fully-equipped to deal with fighting a war on terror and who seems to have surrounded himself with some questionable aides and confidantes who don't actually support the same principles he does. As I mentioned before, Josh Brolin is terrific playing Bush at all ages as a truly-likable person, especially when meeting and courting his future wife Laura (Elizabeth Banks).

Stone seems content to show Bush in a non-cynical way. The entire first hour plays out as a loose character comedy which just happens to be about very serious situations involving dozens of real-life characters. Stone uses longer takes than normal and leaves it up to the audience to interpret what it all means. It's only in the final hour, where the Iraq War shows a badly-divided Bush Administration when someone could take any real objection to the politics shown. No matter who seems to be on the hawk or dove sides, W. almost always seems to be a man in the middle, trying to weigh both sides and keep things together while trying to uphold the Constitution. I will admit that you'll have to decide if Stone was being satirical in his use of the recurring background music of "Robin Hood", "Deep in the Heart of Texas" and "The Yellow Rose of Texas" throughout the film. It also ends with one of my fave Dylan songs, "With God on Our Side", playing over the end credits. I wouldn't be surprised if W. himself interprets that song differently than I do, but I also know that W. probably looks at baseball differently than I do, and baseball is used as a metaphor throughout the film.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Lust For Life (Vincente Minnelli, 1956)




I'll admit that I may have a tough time justifying such a high rating for a very melodramatic and mostly-depressing biopic of Vincent Van Gogh, but since he's my favorite artist, and Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn (as Van Gogh's friend Paul Gauguin) are so good in their roles here, I'll surprise myself and continue to think this highly of it. Van Gogh was a deeply-disturbed individual who found it difficult to give all the love he felt for a suffering humanity. He was also apparently clinically-depressed from his extreme sense of loneliness and low self-worth, and he suffered seizures, especially in the final two years of his life. The film follows Van Gogh's life at a mining village and his subsequent reunion with his brother Theo (James Donald). Van Gogh had bad luck with women, and after being told he was a failure as a Man of God, he was also considered a failed artist. It's only when he's left to his own devices and moves into a house in Arles, that he begins to perfect his own intense post-impressionist style which makes him so beloved to this day.

The highlights of the film, besides the dozens of Van Gogh paintings on display, are that many of the characters and settings are obvious recreations of the people and places that Vincent painted. That and the scenes between Van Gogh and Gauguin where they argue about how and what to paint and what it means to them. Although the men were obviously friends, the relationship was a very stormy one and eventually led to Vincent cutting off part of his left ear. After this incident, Vincent agreed to commit himself to a mental hospital at Saint-Rémy. He would go for long stretches just relaxing without his paints and canvas, but when he was deemed well enough to work, he created many of his most-famous paintings while staying at the hospital. The overall intensity of Lust For Life is immeasurably aided by the musical score by Miklós Rózsa and the brightly-colored photography of F.A. Young and Russell Harlan. At the center of it all is the voice of the human soul crying out for companionship and understanding.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
The Two of Us (Claude Berri, 1967)




1967 was a seminal year in film, and more than a few MoFos have even mentioned it as somehow being significant (although I find that date completely arbitrary). However, who has seen this wonderfully-moving film from 1967, or even more directly, who has even heard of it? Claude Berri was almost nine-years-old when the things which this film delineates happened to him during WWII. Most people recognize Berri as the director of Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring and the producer of Polanski's Tess, but this first feature film of his remains my favorite, and sometimes I have to wonder why I like it so much. Of course, Berri had to embroider his film a bit, and I realize now that it's the "embroidery" which I probably enjoy even more than the reality. Berri was a Jew living in Paris and going to school while his parents basically hid in a kind woman's attic. Well, Claude would constantly get into trouble and draw attention to himself by acting out, so his parents decided it would be better for all concerned to send him off to the country to keep him away from prying Nazi and Vichy eyes.

Claude goes to live with the kind woman's mom and dad ("Pepe") (the wonderfully-irascible Godfather of French actors, Michel Simon), and here he learns from the old man that many groups of individuals are bad for the country, including Jews. The boy also learns about unconditional love from the same source, so when the whip-smart Claude begins to question Pepe about his seemingly-racist views, he's able to win a few concessions from the old man, who has no idea the Kid is a Jew, even though Pepe assures everyone that he can "smell them out". This beautiful comedy-drama actually reminded me a bit of Gran Torino, at least thematically, but I'll concede that this film is surely more transcendent. The strength of this film lies in the details. You begin watching it, and you understand all the characters and their situations, but you aren't really sure what you think of them. Then, about halfway through the film, everything becomes almost magical, and the lovely score by George Delerue becomes more prominent, and you (I) basically spend the entire last 45 minutes laughing through something resembling tears of joy. I could be completely "off my rocker", but everyone has some films they love and almost feel a mystical affinity for, and The Two Of Us, literally translated as The Old Man and the Boy, is one of such films for me



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
What Just Happened (Barry Levinson, 2008)
+



Robert De Niro was one of the producers of this adaptation of the Art Linson book about the insides of the Hollywood studio system. That may help contribute to why this film contains his best screen performance which I've seen since Ronin. Coincidentally, he plays producer Ben who is having problems with his two latest films. One is a Sean Penn thriller called Fiercely, by a Guy Ritchieish director (the wonderful Michael Wincott), which has just bombed at a test screening because Penn's dog gets killed in bloody closeup at the end. This doesn't make studio chief Lou (Catherine Keener) happy at all. The other film is about to start shooting with Bruce Willis, but Bruce has grown a full-length beard and claims it's his artistic right to wear it even though the studio says they paid him $20 million for a leading man, so if he doesn't shave, they'll pull the plug on the film and sue both Willis and Ben. To make matters worse, Ben also seems to be having problems getting over the latest of his broken marriages.

I can't quite explain why I don't give this film a higher rating. I think it's worth watching, it has some big laughs sprinkled throughout, Willis is good playing his own insane self and John Turturro is very funny as his agent who sounds like he may die from a fear-induced gag reflex. The story line involving the film Fiercely plays out humorously at the Cannes Film Festival, and the cast is superb, including Robin Wright Penn as one of Ben's exes and Stanley Tucci as a suspicious argyle socks wearer. Still, something just seems a bit lacking; even so I could just as easily rate this as a
-, so somebody else tell me what they think.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols, 1971)



This acidic social satire of what men really think about women was penned by cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and Jack Nicholson gets to play one of the all-time scumbags who makes the guys in In the Company of Men seem like Mother Teresa. At college during the 1940s, Jonathan (Nicholson) and his best friend Sandy (Art Garfunkel) constantly converse about what they want from women although neither is particularly experienced, or so Jonathan says. They both date and become infatuated with Susan (Candice Bergen), although Sandy's in love with her and Jonathan just wants to screw her. Thus sets the stage for following the men's lives throughout many women on up through the middle-to-late 1960s. Sandy honestly feels the need to have a full relationship with a woman, heart and soul, but all Jonathan seems to care about is their "T & A" and waiting for each relationship to fail so he can move on to the next doomed one, the most significant of which involves what seems to be Jonathan's "perfect woman" (Ann-Margret).

Carnal Knowledge unites director Mike Nichols with DP Giuseppe Rotunno, and as the film begins, it often plays out as a period inverse of The Graduate. Initially, the soundtrack is filled with the best dance music of the WWII era, and there is plenty of witty dialogue, camerawork and acting. As the film progresses, it gets far darker and reveals the full agenda of both showing how men put down women and how these filmmakers will try to castrate those who deserve it. Jonathan spends half of the movie talking about how every woman who loves him wants to bust his balls. It might not be a light evening of entertainment, but it's still powerful and, I dare say, entertaining.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
The 10th Victim (Elio Petri, 1965)



Elio Petri, the Communist satirist of Cold War/Vietnam War-era Italy, reached his peak in 1970 with Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion where he almost predicted Watergate. This earlier film is equally satiric in that it depicts a futuristic world (seemingly socialist) without war. Instead of all-out war between nations, individuals can take out their aggressions by signing up for the worldwide game of "kill-or-be-killed". Each time you kill or avoid being killed in the game, you win money and gain fame. The object is to kill your prey five times and avoid being killed by your hunter five times (this involves killing said hunter each time). If you succeed all 10 times , you become a "Decathlete". In this film, the key players are American Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress) who needs one last kill to become a Decathlete, and Roman Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) who's about to enter his seventh life-or-death mission. Marcello has a crapload of baggage involving ex-wives and jealous girlfriends, and he seems almost suicidal as the next game begins. However, as things play out, both killers find themselves strangely attracted to each other, so it becomes difficult to tell what will finally happen, no matter how many twists and turns the plot takes.

The 10th Victim isn't the best film you'll ever see, but it's amazing how much it'll make you think about reality TV, the future, why certain movies SHOULD be remade (Not Total Recall, for godssake! My daughter wants to remake this ASAP), the Battle of the Sexes, and in this film's case specifically, how somebody could compose a musical score just as spaced out as one of Ennio Morricone's weirdest. If you're ever lucky enough to see Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (it's currently unavailable on DVD), you'll quickly notice the completely-bizarre Morricone score. This film's score sounds exactly like Morricone, but no, it's by Piero Piccioni, who apparently never worked with Morricone. However, fans of The Big Lebowski can hear Piccioni's music ("Traffic Boom") for it right here.



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Religulous (Larry Charles, 2008)



I'll admit that I'm not really a fan of Maher. By that, I don't mean that I don't like him; I just have never really followed his career that much. However, I'll also say that he's able to make an equal-opportunity insultathon which rivals Larry Charles' previous film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, for big laughs and a collection of deadpan disapproval by real people. I appreciate what Maher tries to do here; everyone should examine their beliefs and attempt to "prove all things", and it's obvious that many of the "Christians, Jews, Muslims, Crackpots" should get skewered for some of their backward thinking, or perhaps, just plain non-thinking. Yet, Maher doesn't quite come off as the rational flipside of the wackos he ridicules. Maher keeps saying that he doesn't know the answers, but when he "sounds" so much more "wise and knowledgable" that his interviewees, he comes across as a person who is disingenuous. He does wrap up his film with what I find a powerful statement against organized religion, especially in the way it's used in many countries today, but Maher never once even has the guts to say that "when you die, that's it, you're dead, permanently". I would have more respect for him as a serious seeker of the truth if he just said that, but he seems to try to hedge his bets. Even so, there's no denying that this movie is damn funny for several reasons. I just don't think it's a [Book of] "Revelation".



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Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008)



OK, some people love and some people hate Luhrmann's style. I probably fall somewhere in the middle. In spite of his in-your-face staging, I tend to find his films entertaining, especially since there's usually the bottom line of a romance to smooth things over for those who can't get past all his visual and editorial flamboyance. This film begins with several editing flaws (I mean to say that the editing style is just annoying) and the film seems to exist in some alternate movie universe which would never had passed muster at Warner Bros. with Errol Flynn starring. Yet, even so, this "historical" film about what happened in Australia, both concerning the "Lost Generation" of aborigine children and WWII, still delivers enough "old-fashioned entertainment", especially in the romance department (my wife says it's "VERY romantic"), that it's certainly watchable for those who don't believe they're above an overblown, melodramatic, overstuffed, special effects extravaganza. To tell you the truth, the film which Australia most reminds me of is Pearl Harbor, but I like that film more than most do, even if I've only watched it once. It's just that Australia has Jack Thompson, Bryan Brown and Davil Gulpilil (a national treasure), so I'll certainly cut it some slack against those who want to tighten the rope enough to hang Luhrmann & Co.



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W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (John G. Avildsen, 1975)



In 1957, sweet-talking robber/con man W.W. (Burt Reynolds) drives throughout the South in his 1955 Oldsmobile 88, holding up S.O.S. gasoline stations but always giving some of the money back to the person he robs. One night, while trying to avoid the police, this Robin Hood stumbles across a band called the Dancekings and becomes attracted to their upright singer Dixie (Conny Van Dyke). W.W. promises that he can get them a gig in Nashville the very next night, and he delivers, even if it turns out only to be playing at an amateur contest. Eventually, W.W. says that he can get the group on the Grand Ole Opry, but little does he know that the S.O.S. Corp. has sent their top "hit man", the Deacon (Art Carney), to capture W.W. and stop his reign of holdups.

This flick captures Burt Reynolds at the height of his charm, the script by Thomas Rickman (Coalminer's Daughter) is one of his most enjoyable, and Avildsen directs in the crowd-pleasing style he used the following year to gain a Best Director Oscar for Rocky. The beginning and ending of this fairy tale are even better than my rating above, but the middle of the film gets a bit extended and loses some of the comic head of steam that built up at the start. For those interested, the Dancekings include such famous faces as Jerry Reed, James Hampton, and Rick Hurst, and there's a funny cameo by Ned Beatty playing a country-singing star who agrees to listen to the Dancekings. This flick isn't available on DVD, but I have no reasonable explanation for that.



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Lights in the Dusk (Aki Kaurismäki, 2006)



Director Kaurismäki uses his typical deadpan style to tell the story of a lonely Helsinki security guard (Janne Hyytiäinen) who leads one of the most boring lives in existence. His only brushes with honest human interaction come from his daily stops at the tiny local grill where he exchanges a word or two with the female worker (Maria Heiskanen). Then one day out of the blue, a blonde woman (Maria Järvenhelmi) approaches him and rather coldly asks him to take her out, and he accepts. The problem is that the blonde is working for a crooked businessman (Ilkka Koivula) who's trying to take advantage of the loser guard's position to steal some jewels.

Although the film can be seen as some form of neo-noir, it fits more "comfortably" into the director's minimalistic, existential style of making dark comedies from things which seem to be far more tragic than humorous. We never learn about what makes the security guard's life the way it is, but we can understand and relate to him as a lovable outsider who doesn't seem to have many social skills. I'm sure there are many viewers unfamiliar with Kaurismäki who will swear that there are no laughs at all in the film, and there are probably those who understand his agenda and do not like it. Even so, he has built up a fervent cult, and this film goes into many of his themes and motifs, including love of animals, cigarette smoking, heavy drinking, rock 'n' roll, crime, loneliness, etc. I didn't find it quite as compelling as The Man Without a Past, but it's still worth a look-see if you're in the mood or a fan. The ending is a keeper.



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Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)




This is Hitch's only film to win a Best Picture Oscar, but no, he didn't win best director (he never did). This is a David O. Selznick production, and it seems more like a Selznick film than a Hitchcock one. It's got terrific storytelling, wonderful acting and a sumptuous production. Hitchcock does imbue the film with mystery and suspense, but it seems to be more of a professional job and less of a personal undertaking to get at the audience, which, after all, is basically why Hitchcock films are so appealing. Even if Hitch seems a little bit hamstrung by being a team player here, the plot is so ingenious and the characters so interesting that it's definitely a must-see and probably the best film Hitch made during the 1940s (and yes, I realize many feel that film should be Notorious, but feel free to keep that opinion if it's yours ). I don't know if I want to spoil it too much, but basically wealthy widower Laurence Olivier meets and eventually marries a simple young woman (Joan Fontaine), and later he takes her to his enormous estate Manderley where the overwhelming presence of his dead wife Rebecca threatens to shatter their marriage. To make things even more frightful, Rebecca's devoted housekeeper (Judith Anderson) goes out of her way to tell the new wife that she can never compare in any way to Rebecca. The strength of the film is that things are never actually quite what they appear to be, almost right to the very end.



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
why certain movies SHOULD be remade (Not Total Recall, for godssake! My daughter wants to remake this ASAP)
__________________
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.