Gideon58's Reviews

Awesome review! of A Face In the Crowd. I can tell you were really impressed with the movie and your review reflects that beautifully. I agree with all of what you said. I especially liked and agreed with this:

A Face in the Crowd did deserve an Oscar. I think the film not winning any Oscars has to do with the fact that Elia Kazan 5 years earlier had testified as a witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, back in 1952. That was during the time of the Hollywood blacklist. He was shunned by some in the film industry.

Wow! That's two excellent reviews I've seen now (from Gideon and Rules) for A Face in the Crowd.
I really need to see this movie!
I'm kind of kicking myself because I saw it listed on TCM a while back and passed it over because I thought, "Another Andy Griffith as good-hearted country bumpkin vehicle."

A 5 rating is as good as it gets on MoFo, and A Face in the Crowd deserves it too. It's one of the few films like I liked more on a second viewing. Check it out if it comes back to TCM.

So then how do you explain Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954) winning 8 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director?

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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Yeah, it also occurred to me that the blacklisting might have something to do with it too.

Good question.

I did say this: First as I just said, I agree with Gideon's reasons...Also by 1957 the House Committee on Un-American Activities also known as McCarthism/Blacklisting had grown much worse than it was in 1954. So it's possible that voting Academy Members had their eyes opened by 1957 and decided (individual but in sufficient numbers) not to vote for a Eliz Kazan film due to his willing participation in the anti-communism hearings.

Which is very much like what will happen at the next Oscars, when voting Academy Members will decide in mass to 'make up' for the Jada Pinkett Smith racist claims and we will see a larger number of black Americans winning the Oscar next year. The Oscar votes are influenced by outside 'politics'.

BAD SANTA

The recent release of the sequel motivated me to check out 2003's Bad Santa, an outrageous black comedy that offers sporadic laughs as long as you don't think about it too much and as long as you accept going in that nothing that happens in this film can happen in real life.

Billy Bob Thornton plays Willie Stokes, a lazy, alcoholic safe cracker who, along with his partner, the miniature Marcus (Tony Cox), work once a year. At Christmas time, they get themselves hired as a department store Santa and his elf helper and then on Christmas Eve, they break into the store safe and clean the place out. As the story opens, they have already robbed seven stores and they have now arrived in Phoenix where Willie befriends a young boy (Brett Kelly) who is bullied at school on a regular basis and seems to believe that Willie really is Santa and a pretty bartender (Lauren Graham). Their plan is complicated by the store's security officer (the late Bernie Mac) who is asked to keep an eye on them by the tight-assed store manager (the late John Ritter), who does a little detective work and finds out exactly who Willie and Marcus are.

Since Joel and Ethan Cohen are billed as executive producers, it was assumed that what was about to follow was not to be taken too seriously. In the spirit of films like The Ref, I suspect this is supposed to be the Christmas movie for people who hate Christmas movies and if that was indeed the intended demographic, a bullseye was scored here, but if you're looking for anything resembling logic or realism, you've got the wrong movie. I just went with it...I went with the fact that Thornton, who looks anorexic in this movie, doesn't even bother to pad his Santa costume...I went with it that the character was drunk for the entire running time, including the time he was asking small children what they wanted for Christmas...I went with it when the title of the film flashed on the screen while Willie was bent over a garbage can behind a bar throwing up...I went with it when this kid kept calling Willie Santa even though I knew there was no way this kid could believe this guy was really Santa, but you know when it all became OK? When Willie notices the kid's black eye and goes to his school and beats the crap out of the kid who did it.

Director Terry Swigoff has an imaginative directorial eye and the screenplay by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa is peppered with enough adult language that the 18-34 demographic will be amused. Billy Bob Thornton does give a terrific performance in the title role and gets solid support from Mac and Cox, but the film has some long stretches that might make you drowsy, especially involving this clueless kid, but Thornton's performance alone makes this worth a look.

"Black comedy" as in dark humor, or "black comedy" as in there's a black elf and Bernie Mac in it?

You didn't really go there did you, Sexy?

The first time i watched Bad Santa i would've rated it about the same, rewatched it earlier this year though and really loved it. Man. that kid and Billy Bob are incredible together.

DECK THE HALLS

Deck the Halls is a juvenile and pointless 2006 comedy that wastes a lot of talented actors in a story that is just not worthy of them.

The film stars Matthew Broderick as Dr. Steve Finch, an optometrist in a small Massachusetts suburb who gets positively anal when Christmas rolls around. He is not only in charge of the town's winter Festival, but he has a strict schedule of Christmas activities for his family in a 3 ring binder. His plans change when Buddy Hall (Danny De Vito), a car salesman, moves in across the street with his wife (Kristen Chenoweth) and twin daughters. Thanks to a website that his daughters show him, Buddy becomes obsessed with making the Christmas decorations on his house visible from space.

Director John Whitesell displays a flair for cinematic slapstick, but slapstick without a viable story behind it is just an SNL sketch and the actors involved seem very aware of this. Broderick and De Vito look properly embarrassed throughout and I feel their pain. The screenplay by Matt Corman and Chris Ord is an unsettling balance of crude sexual entendres and sugary sentiment. Steve's wife, Kelly, played by Kristen Davis, actually has a line in the film where she scolds her husband about not making the most out of those "chocolate milk and french fry moments". Pass the insulin please.

Broderick is a perfect straight man and he and De Vito work very hard at making this silliness worth our time and they are fighting the ridiculous screenplay all the way. I never really bought De Vito and Chenowith as a married couple and Chenowith's musical moment near the climax of the film just seems thrown in because someone said, "Hey, we've got Kristen Chenoweth...we've got have her sing somewhere!" Davis' role as Mrs. Finch is thankless and could have been played by just about anyone. Fred Armisen and Gillian Vigman shamelessly ape a pair of characters Armisten and Kristen Wiig played on SNL and this so-called "wholesome family comedy" also seems to imply that Buddy Hall has the hots for his nubile 16 year old twin daughters. A holiday movie that walks a thin tightrope between boredom and tastelessness,,,not an easy thing to do.

THE MYSTERY OF NATALIE WOOD

ABC television struck gold with their lavish TV biography of Judy Garland entitled Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows. Unfortunately, they did not have nearly the success with their 2004 effort The Mystery of Natalie Wood, another expensive made-for-television biopic focusing on an iconic movie star whose mysterious and tragic accidental drowning still haunts people today with so many unanswered questions about exactly what happened and the aggravation that has developed over the fact that the parties who were directly involved that night still aren't talking. This TV movie is afforded the same care and attention to its subject that the Garland film was but suffers due to a fuzzy screenplay and a problematic performance from the actress playing the title role.

The film is a detail-oriented look at the star's life, a young girl of Russian descent whose real name was Natasha Gurdin who was pretty much pushed into show business by her domineering mother, Maria who neglected the rest of her family in order to focus on Natalie and her career...not unlike Judy Garland's relationship with her mother, Ethel Gumm, and like Judy, Natalie could never wrestle free of her mother's iron grip, though said grip was instrumental in the beginning of Natalie's path to becoming a movie star. We watch as Maria murders a butterfly in order to get young Natasha to cry on cue during her film debut and even though she was pushed into it, began to take control of certain aspects of her career...we watch her tireless efforts to get the role of Judy in Rebel Without a Cause, which may or may not have motivated a sexual relationship with the director, Nicholas Ray and her troubled relationship with director Elia Kazan, as well her fairy tale romance with Robert Wagner, which couldn't withstand Natalie's fame, but would eventually heal, and of course, her mysterious death in the water in 1981.

And this was one of the primary problems with the film for me. We all know the story of how Natalie died and how Natalie always had a fear of water, but the screenplay here just pounds it into our heads with sledgehammer-like effect through about two thirds of the film's running time. It seems like every ten minutes in the film we are reminded that a gypsy predicted Natalie death in dark water and that Natalie had a lifelong fear of water. We all knew this and didn't need to be reminded of it constantly throughout the story. I would have liked this film to concentrate more on Natalie's long dormant desire to be a mother, her stormy relationships with Wagner and Richard Gregson (her marriage to Gregson is summed up in about 10 minutes), and more behind the scenes dirt on the set of her many movies.

I sat patiently waiting for the story to reach the point where Natalie was cast in West Side Story, one of her biggest hits but also a film where many felt she was miscast and there was a lot of tension on the set because of it. Again, precious little time was devoted to this crucial point in her career. This movie concentrated too much on unsubstantiated parts of her personal life rather than confirming documented controversy. The film created relationships that I never knew Natalie had before. This film presents Natalie as having some sort of relationship with Marilyn Monroe and relating to her so much that according to this film, the day Marilyn died, Natalie was so affected by it but not in the way you would think...it appears that Natalie is almost jealous of the attention that Marilyn received by dying which I found really disturbing.

Director Peter Bogdanovich works very hard at making classic Hollywood look fresh and glamorous and manages to get some pretty solid performances from his cast. Justine Waddell is acceptable in the title role, resembling the star, but never really capturing her maturity or intelligence. Loved Michael Weatherly as Robert Wagner and Matthew Settle as Warren Beatty, but the acting honors here definitely go to Alice Krige as Natalie's nightmare of a mother, a performance of bone-chilling intensity that should have at least earned her an Emmy nomination. I must also credit Bogdanovich for the detail he put into the final act of the movie on the boat...we all know what happens, but there is a viable tension created here that actually made the final fifteen minutes of this movie very difficult to watch. The movie has its problems, primarily ignoring or glossing over facts in favor of dramatic effect, but fans of the iconic star will definitely want to take a look.

THE SHAGGY DOG (1959)
Walt Disney Studios were the industry giants of animation during the 1940's, 50's & 60"s, but it took a while before they made an impression with live action comedy and one of their first offerings was a minor classic from 1959 called The Shaggy Dog.

This was the story of Wilby Daniels (Tommy Kirk), a nerdy 50's teen who is competing with his greasy best pal Buzz (Tim Considine) for the attentions of pretty Allison (Annette Funicello) but find themselves distracted when a college professor (Alexander Scourby) moves in across the street with his pretty young daughter, Franceska (Roberta Shore) who owns a rare Egyptian sheepdog she calls Chiffon. The dog is inexplicably attracted to Wilby and not long after, Wilby has an encounter with a dotty Professor (Cecil Kellaway) which finds Wilby in possession of an ancient ring that, after Wilby repeats a certain Latin phrase, turns Wilby into Chiffon, though he still has the ability to speak.

The story is complicated by Wilby's father, Wilson Daniels (Fred MacMurray), a mailman who, for obvious reasons, can't stand dogs and actually thinks he's allergic to them, even though he's not. Every time Wilson thinks there's a dog within a hundred miles, he starts breaking into imaginary hives and has refused the numerous requests of Wilby's little brother, Moochie (Kevin Corcoran) to have a dog as a pet.

Of course, the spell under which Wilby has fallen has temporary effects which find him changing from boy to sheepdog and back again at the most inopportune moments, most notably, during a dance where he is trying to impress Allison and in the presence of Franceska's father when it is revealed that he is actually a spy.

Yes, long before Disney Pixar was even a concept, Disney was able to mount a multi-layered story that, if the truth be told, the intended demographic probably didn't even notice. I'm pretty sure kids didn't notice the convoluted love triangle between Wilby, Buzz, Allison, and Franceska and the only part of the spy story that had them paying attention was when Wilby the dog is actually driving a car chasing the bad guys. I actually think my favorite subplot of the story is that Moochie is thrilled when he learns his older brother is a dog and works very hard to try to keep his secret and keep him as a pet at the same time. Sometimes Moochie is a little too smart for his years, but it's Disney fantasy so you let things like that slide.

MacMurray is properly befuddled as the confused dad in what is basically a supporting role, even though he receives top billing. Jean Hagen as MacMurray's wife and Funicello are wasted in thankless roles, but Kirk and Corcoran are properly energetic as the stars of the show and there is a funny supporting turn from an actor named James Westerfield as a cop who thinks he's losing his mind when he encounters a talking dog. The movie may be over 60 years old, but it still made me laugh.

HAIRSPRAY LIVE (2016)

NBC and FOX continue to compete in this interesting new trend of bringing Broadway musicals to television. Unfortunately, NBC's latest offering of Hairspray provided lackluster results. This mounting of the Broadway musical has some good things going for it; however, suffers due to an overly preachy re-hauling of the original libretto, some questionable casting choices, lackadaisical direction, and some production issues that could have easily been handled with more efficiency.

The property originally came to the screen as a 1988 comedy drama from demented filmmaker John Waters featuring two of Waters' greatest discoveries: transvestite Divine and Ricki Lake. The piece was turned into a smash Broadway musical that premiered in 2002 and ran for over 2600 performances and a film version of the musical hit theaters in 2007.

It is 1960's Baltimore where we meet Tracy Turnblad, an overweight teenager who dreams of being a dancer on THE CORNY COLLINS SHOW, an "American Bandstand" type dance show produced by the bitchy and bigoted Velma Von Tussle and featuring her equally nasty daughter Amber as one of the dancers. Once a month the show features what is known as "Negro Day", where they play music exclusively by black artists and only feature black dancers. Tracy and her best friend Penny get a chance to audition for the show and Tracy actually gets cast on the show and her innocent remark that she wishes every day on the show was Negro day makes her a somewhat unwilling spokesperson for racial equality, hampering her budding romance with Link Larkin, a dancer on the show who is involved with Amber but Tracy and every other Baltimore teenage girl is crushing on.

This story raised eyebrows because the role of Edna Turnblad was originally played by a transvestite and the role has traditionally been played by a man. When the movie became a Broadway musical, Harvey Fierstein played the role of Edna and John Travolta inherited the role in the film version of the musical. I have to admit I was impressed by the fact that for the first time since these live musicals started being produced, an actor was allowed to reprise the role they created on Broadway. Fierstein was allowed to recreate his Broadway role as Edna and also wrote the screenplay for this production and, if the truth be told, I wish he had just been allowed to concentrate on his performance because one of the things that I liked about the 2007 film version is that the message regarding racial equality was not driven home with a sledgehammer, but Fierstein brought out the sladgehammer big time here, having Tracy announce every ten minutes that she wants "everyone to dance together." I think his duties as writer affected his performance as well, which just seemed kind of phoned in to me.

There is some strong casting going on here though...Maddie Baillio lights up the screen as Tracy and her rich vocals were one of the true pleasures of this production. Derek Hough was surprisingly slick as Corny Collins and I loved Dove Cameron as Amber, who made the most of a number written especially for this production called "She's Got Cooties." Ariana Grande was fun as Penny and Garrett Clayton's resemblance to Zac Efron didn't hurt his performance as Link. Martin Short was acceptable as Tracy's dad, though he seemed to be slipping into Ed Grimley every now and then. I have to admit to being a little disappointed with Kristen Chenoweth as Velma Von Tussle, the villain of the piece...Chenoweth is a powerhouse vocalist but she doesn't bring the bitchiness the role requires, but Jennifer Hudson made a great Motormouth Maybelle and Ephraim Sykes made every moment he had onscreen count as her son, Seaweed, who falls for Penny.

The score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman came here mostly intact, including "Good Morning Baltimore", "Miss Baltimore Crabs", "I Hear the Bells", "Ladies Choice", "Without Love", "You're Timeless to Me", and "You Can't Stop the Beat"; unfortunately, the huge orchestra overpowers a lot of the singers making it hard to catch a lot of lyrics. Kenny Leons direction is a little too leisurely to the point that when the story stops singing and dancing, it stops becoming interesting and with the exception of "Run and Tell Dat", the choreography is surprisingly pedestrian. This production definitely deserves an "A" for effort, but parts were definitely better than the whole.

HOPE SPRINGS
A pair of powerhouse performances from Oscar winners Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones make a forgotten gem from 2012 called Hope Springs worth your time.

Streep and Jones play Kay and Arnold Soames, a couple who have been married for 31 years but sleep in separate rooms. They are not unhappy, but Arnold has accepted the quiet rut their marriage has become. Kay, on the other hand is another matter. She reads a self-help book on marriage written by a Doctor Feld (Steve Carell) and is so moved by the book that she googles the doctor and learns that he does intense couple counseling from a sleepy little town in Maine. Without even consulting Arnold, Kay signs them up for counseling with the good doctor, determined to bring romance back to their marriage, whether Arnold is interested or not.

In addition to the starring performances, credit has to go to screenwriter Vanessa Taylor for providing a solid story with vividly flawed but completely believable characters who are not young and beautiful anymore. These characters also have their own minds and don't always kow tow to the wishes of other characters in their orbit. As expected, Arnold balks when he learns about this couples counseling that his wife has signed them up for, but in a refreshing change of pace, Kay announces to Arnold that she is going to Maine whether he does or not. I wanted to cheer as Kay packed her bags and got on that plane as Arnold watched with his mouth dangling open. We knew Arnold was going to join Kay, we just didn't know when and that's what made this so much fun.

Once they arrive in Maine and start meeting with Dr. Feld, this is where we see the work of David Frankel kick in. Frankel directed Streep in The Devil Wears Prada so he knew exactly the kind of performance he wanted from this extraordinary actress and he proved that he could bring more out of Streep, who breathes mesmerizing life into a character nothing like Miranda Priestley and does most of it without dialogue. What Frankel does brilliantly in the the scenes with Carell's therapist, is that he allows a lot of the reveal of what's going on this marriage comes from the reacting between the two principals...I love the way Kay and Arnold sit on complete opposite sides of the couch when they are meeting with Dr. Feld and I also loved the way every time Feld would ask Kay or Arnold a question individually, you would see the other bristle in anticipation of what the answer was going to be. We knew there was a chance for this marriage when Feld asks them about the best sexual experience they ever had and they seem to find some common ground.

This is not an easy road this couple takes and there are a couple of very unpleasant detours that this story takes, but these two brilliant actors, Streep in particular, make you care about these prickly scenes from a marriage and we really want to see Kay get what she wants. Streep gives another of her magical performances that rises above the material she's provided and Jones matches her note for note as the man who had become accustomed to the vacuum his marriage had become and was not thrilled at having to fight for his continued indifference. Carell beautifully underplays as the therapist, allowing these two wonderful actors make this story work and they do.

PITCH PERFECT 2
From that vast wasteland of cinematic junk known as the unnecessary sequel comes Pitch Perfect 2, the overblown and seemingly endless sequel to the 2012 film that will have a bookmark in cinema history as the feature directorial debut of Elizabeth Banks.

As we rejoin those darlings of A Capella singing, the Bellas, they have won the Nationals three times but an embarrassing incident during a command performance for Barack and Michelle Obama gets them suspended from further national competition, so they decide to enter the world championship, where their primary competition is a German group called Das Sound Machine. We also learn that Beca (Anna Kendrick), who had to be dragged onstage with the Bellas during the first film, is their leader now and does all their arrangements but her priorities appear to change when she receives an internship with a record company.

Further subplots include a new recruit to the Bellas named Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) who has dreamed all her life of being a Bella and is also a legacy, her mother (Katey Sagal), also having been a Bella. Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) also finds herself trying to keep Bumper (Adam Devine ) at arm's length, who has declared his undying love for her.

The primary problem with this movie is pretty much the same problem I had with the first film: the musical sequences are professionally mounted but when the music stopped, so did any interest I had in what was going on. I didn't think this movie was ever going to end. The screenplay by Kay Cannon and Mickey Rapkin presented some very confusing scenarios, primarily, how does a singing group get banned from a national competition but it's OK for them to participate in an international competition? Once we have swallowed this part of the story, we know that there's no point in making the movie if the Bellas don't win the competition so why do we have to sit through two other competitions where Das Sound Machine kicks their ass but they miraculously win the competition at the end of the movie?

One of these "extra" competitions was some sort of underground improvised competition where the groups have to come up with instant arrangements of songs from categories on a "Family Feud" type game board. It bothered me that these groups were able to come up with these arrangements instantly, seeming to really minimize the skill and work that goes into A Capella singing, making it seem a lot easier than it is.

My feelings about the characters have not changed since the first movie either...Anna Kendrick's Beca is still really unlikable and I don't get all the fuss regarding Rebel Wilson's Fat Amy, the only character in the film given a romantic interest, not to mention the fact that Beca's love interest in the first film (Skylar Astin) has been reduced to a glorified walk on. Hailee Steinfeld, so impressive in the True Grit remake, is just annoying here. Mention should be made of a smart turn by Keegan-Michael Key as Beca's boss at the record company. Despite her heavy-handed direction, Banks and John Michael Higgins, just like they did in the first film, provide the only real laughs in the movie as the competition commentators, but their screen time is not sufficient to make this snore-inducing two hours worth the effort.

FLIGHTPLAN
Despite some plot holes you can drive a truck through, the 2005 film Flightplan draws the viewer completely into an improbable story thanks to evocative direction and the accustomed powerhouse lead performance from Jodie Foster, an actress who can make the most implausible story completely riveting.

Foster plays Kyle Pratt, an engineer who has flown to Berlin with her six year old daughter to retrieve the body of her recently deceased husband, also an engineer and return the body back to the states. Kyle and her daughter board a plane back to the states with her husband's casket in the cargo area. Shortly after takeoff, Kyle and her daughter move to the back of the massive airliner to stretch out and take a nap. Kyle wakes up a short time later to discover her daughter missing.

What we become witness to is an elaborate conspiracy manifested through a parental nightmare as we see the flight crew actually try to convince Kyle that her daughter was never on this flight despite the fact that we have seen her daughter on board, we have seen people on the flight who have seen Kyle's daughter who are now pretending that they didn't and an air marshall (Peter Sarsgaard) who befriends Kyle almost immediately without mentioning or acknowledging her daughter's presence and is slow to cooperate with Kyle when she claims her daughter is missing. The final clue that we are in the middle of a major conspiracy is that after Kyle is initially told that her daughter was never on the plane and that no one saw her, Kyle is then told that her daughter died along with her husband.

This story is, on the surface, a little ridiculous, because we saw Kyle and daughter Julia get on the plane, but what does begin to intrigue the viewer, and director Robert Schwentke must be credited for this, is trying to figure out who is in on this who is not and how they feel about it. Pulling off a conspiracy like this requires intimate attention to detail and someone with power over an awful lot of people who can command their silence and stage things without the knowledge of the flight crew because at the beginning of the story, it appears that several members of the flight crew are in on what's going on, but this turns out to be a large red herring that is pretty difficult to believe especially the way Schwentke has the flight crew play the story. This is where the screenplay by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray has to eat a lot of what's wrong with this story because there's just too much left unexplained here...the night before Kyle boards her flight, she observes a couple of Arabs watching her hotel room and then sees them on the flight. They are revealed as being innocent, but why were they watching Kyle's hotel room?

Despite the problems with this improbable story, I could not take my eyes off the screen, thanks primarily to Jodie Foster, an actress who completely invests in every role she takes on and makes you believe anything she says and does onscreen and Sarsgaard is sinister and sexy as the air marshall. Mention should also be made of Sean Bean as the captain and Kate Beahan as an icy flight attendant. Superb work from the art direction/set direction departments who make this airliner feel gigantic and claustrophobic at the same time. Sound editing and an appropriately moody music score are the other final touches to a drama that seems a lot better than it really is because the right actress was cast in the leading role.

CLAUDINE
A pair of lead performances by stars cast radically against type is the primary attraction to a 1974 comedy drama called Claudine, that despite some dated plot elements and some cliched dialogue, provides some emotionally charged entertainment that sustains itself for the entire running time.

The film stars Diahann Carroll as Claudine Price, a twice-divorced mother of six living on welfare in a cramped, 4-room apartment and secretly working part-time as a maid. She has to keep it a secret in order to continue receiving her welfare benefits. Claudine is dealing with a very angry eldest son, an eldest daughter who is experimenting with alcohol and sex, a son who wants to drop out of school and is getting into gambling, and another son who is mute. Claudine's full plate gets even fuller when she finds herself tentatively entering a relationship with an utterly charming garbage man named Rupert "Roop" Jackson (James Earl Jones), who is also divorced with children but has had his eye on Claudine for awhile as the house where Claudine works as a maid is on his route.

As expected, Claudine's children are initially very resentful of Roop's presence in their mother's life but Roop eventually wins them over, but the realities of Claudine and Roop's individual lives begin to rear their ugly heads and damage what is beginning to happen between them. Claudine finds her life turned upside down because when she's with Roop, all she thinks about is the kids and when she's with the kids all she thinks about is Roop. Then there's government interference when the welfare people realize that Roop is trying to help Claudine, which welfare technically considers Claudine committing welfare fraud. Roop wants to marry Claudine, but that would reduce the benefits she receives and then when things couldn't get any messier, Roop is being sued for willful neglect of his own kids which manifests itself in the garnishing of his paycheck.

Screenwriters Lester and Tina Pine have constructed a complex story here that doesn't offer a lot of easy answers, but does provide a pretty realistic look at the welfare system during the 1970's and the often aggravating scratch for survival that was the norm for middle and lower class blacks that Norman Lear made light of on the sitcom Good Times, but we get a little more realistic look at it here. It's not all completely serious though...I love when the family goes into "social worker" mode and start hiding everything in the house that the social worker is not supposed to know they have to avoid welfare fraud. The scene where Roop is caught in the middle of "social worker" mode had me on the floor.

Diahann Carroll, known primarily as a singer and fresh off her successful sitcom Julia, raised a few eyebrows here, playing a character nothing like her onscreen persona, that actually earned the actress her only Oscar nomination. Carroll works hard to be convincing as a welfare mom, but I think the performance surprised people because, like Grace Kelly in The Country Girl, Carroll actually appears onscreen without eye makeup. But the real pleasure from this film and the thing that kept me glued to the screen was the brilliant performance by Emmy and Tony winner James Earl Jones as Roop...Jones absolutely commands the screen and, like Carroll, is radically cast against type, playing a romantic leading man, foreign territory for this powerhouse actor whose charisma is almost sometimes too large to contain on a movie screen, but he nails this character, a 100-mega watt performance that made this entire movie worth investing in. Jones totally owns this movie without overpowering Carroll or anyone else, doing exactly what the screenplay requires of him but doing it to the nth degree. Mention should also be made of a young Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as Claudine's eldest son and a terrific song score by Gladys Knight and the Pips, but if for no other reason, this movie is worth a look at the acting powerhouse that is James Earl Jones.

ZOOLANDER
Ben Stiller had one of his biggest hits as the director, co-screenwriter, and star of a lavish, 2001 comic adventure that offers pretty consistent laughs called Zoolander, that works despite a modicum of self-indulgence on Stiller's part.

Derek Zoolander (Stiller) is the top male model in the world who after winning male model of the year three years in a row, loses the title to modeling's newest flavor of the month, Hansel (Owen Wilson) which has Derek re-thinking his purpose in life. Meanwhile, an insane fashion designer named Mugatu (Will Ferrell) tempts Derek back on the runway with a new fashion line which is just a cover to brainwash Derek into assassinating the prime minister of Malaysia.

Stiller, Drake Strather, and John Hamburg's screenplay is overly complex, but what it does nail is the world's view of male modeling and how the men who inhabit said world don't have a brain in their head. And what the screenplay for this film addresses so beautifully is the fact that whether or not these guys are idiots, they will never know because no one ever tells them. You can't help but laugh at the stupid things Derek says and does and how no one ever seems to correct him. Derek's world is so self-involved that he spends all his time working on different "looks" for the camera, giving each look its own name, totally unaware that all the looks are the same. The idea that a male model is the perfect pawn for political assassination is a bit much, but by the time we realize what's going on, we roll with it because we like Derek, silly and self-absorbed as he might be.

Considering all the hats he was wearing here, Stiller manages a funny and engaging performance in the title role, that I think he worked from the perfect vocal inflection he chose for the character...just this side of gay but just enough masculinity to accept as just arrogant and empty-headed. Owen Wilson is a perfect comic foil as Hansel and the "walk-off" between the two models, which features some really sharp editing, is definitely one of the film's highlights, as is Ferrell's scene-stealing comic villain. Stiller's wife, Christine Taylor is an acceptable leading lady, not surprisingly working quite well with her husband. The film also features dozens of cameo appearances including Sandra Bernhard, Cuba Gooding Jr., Billy Zane, Vince Vaughn, David Bowie, Fabio, Garry Shandling, James Marsden, Natalie Portman, Wynona Ryder, and Stiller's parents, Jerry Stiller and the late Anne Meara. The story is a little overblown, but the movie works for the most part and provides solid laughs most of the way. A sequel was released earlier this year.

WALT BEFORE MICKEY
The art of making a proper biopic continues to be one of Hollywood's greatest enigmas. The subject of the film must be worthy of the project and pique the curiosity of the movie audiences. The powers behind the film then have to decide how to fashion the facts into entertainment, entertainment that will sustain interest without challenging the viewer's attention span. The recent trend has been to concentrate on a certain period in the subject's life and make the film about that specific period, but sometimes the filmmakers chose the wrong period to base a story on and herein lies the problem with the 2015 look at the early life and career of Walt Disney called Walt Before Mickey, a snore-inducing look at a show business icon that tells the wrong story and doesn't do it in a terribly interesting manner.

The 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks documented that Walt Disney is a worthy subject for a biopic even though that film was more about PL Travers than it was about Disney, so a film focused on the man himself would, on the surface, be a no-brainer, but this overly-detailed and cliched look at the very beginning of Disney's career as an animator is just not the story to provide viable entertainment for an audience whose prime demographic is barely acquainted with Disney Pixar, could hardly be expected to be interested in what goes on here. Dragged down by a corny and predictable narration, we are introduced to Walt as a daydreaming child who developed an early interest in drawing that developed into a passion for the art of animation.

We are then treated to an agonizing look at a man who had a passion for what he loved, but knew nothing about running a business or keeping an eye on the bottom line. It is not until Walt turns to his older brother, Roy, to keep an eye on the business end of things, allowing Walt to concentrate on the creative end that things start to turn around but even then, reality once again rears its ugly head for Walt when he makes a deal with a distributor to market his work that relieves Walt of ownership of his work, something that Walt could not abide...not being his own boss.

The film does provide an up close look at a man who had a passion for what he did, even though he was not aware of all it involved and the film allows us to watch Walt sink pretty low...there is a point in the film where Walt is observed eating out of garbage cans which leads to some foreshadowing that never is really capitalized on...his friendship with a mouse that he keeps in his shirt pocket.

The story does introduce us to some other future innovators in the world of animation, including Hugh Harman, creator of the Red Ryder comic, and Friz Freleng, the inspiration behind some of Warner Brothers' greatest animated characters, who started working for Walt but could not handle his lack of business expertise. What I expected with a Walt Disney biopic, was a look at Disney's career where this film ended, which made for a very long and dull film.

Thomas Ian Nicholas is sincere as Disney and Jon Heder is fine as Roy and co-screenwriter Armando Gutierrez isn't blown off the screen as Ub Iwerks. Khola Le's sluggish direction is aided somewhat by some first rate production values, but the whole thing just failed to sustain interest due to a story that I didn't really care about.