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2001 Summer Video Roundup, Vol. III

8/9/01

Folks--

My local video store has a new special they are running for a limited time:

Seven movies.  Seven rental days.  $7.

How could I resist?  Seven flicks for less than the cost of one nighttime theater showing!  So, to mix things up a little bit, I went to the video store last Tuesday and rented seven so-called "classic" films that I have not already seen.

"Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"

Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell star in this semi-romantic musical comedy from 1953.  They play song-and-dance showgirls that take a cruise to France...or, as ditzy blonde Lorelei (Monroe) calls it, "Europe, France"...to get into all kinds of trouble with the boys.  Of course, there is more to it than that, but it is always hard to take the plot of a film seriously when the storyline is being sung to the audience.  Luckily, the dance numbers in this film still resonated with me and made me realize the only difference between "Moulin Rouge" and "GPB" is that the latter is actually good!!  Russell might remind you of what Demi Moore is today...a real looker that has attitude to match.  Her Dorothy is the better performance here, even though in some of the dance numbers she plays second fiddle to Monroe.  The non-musical scenes are dry--Chuck, Keith, Katie and I had a hard time staying awake during some of those scenes--and Lorelei as village idiot got stale after a while.  But the end sequence, "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", still brings down the house and made the whole experience worthwhile.

Rating:  Matinee

"Dr. Strangelove or:  How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb"

Hey, no one ever accused Stanley Kubrick ("2001", "A Clockwork Orange", "Full Metal Jacket") of being boring, right?  Well, "Dr. Strangelove" is one hell of a great movie that still manages to be weird enough to be called Kubrickian.  Peter Sellers and George C. Scott--with a dash of James Earl Jones as a USAF bomber to boot--star in this suspense dark comedy about what our nation's government might do if faced with the dangers of nuclear war with Russia.  Scott is great in this movie, but he is upstaged by Sellers, who plays three different roles in the film (I could only tell it was him in one of them, the role of a special British consultant--he also plays the US President AND Dr. Strangelove) and was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar in 1965.  A great film that somehow manages to be very suspenseful and very funny at the same time.

Rating:  Opening Weekend

"The Thomas Crown Affair"

This, the original, was made back in 1968, and featured Steve McQueen as the uber-rich title character who meets his match in an insurance investigator (Faye Dunaway) that he falls in love with.  The opening bank robbery is very well done, and utilizes a bunch of different small on-screen windows to show us the action behind how Crown recruits a crew of robbers to complete the robbery.  But then, it turns into a romance film that didn't work for me this time, whereas the romance in the 1999 version of the film really clicked for me.  The most noticeable problem with both films is how farfetched it is that the insurance investigator comes up with the identity of Crown so quickly; it seemed even faster in the 1968 version, where Dunaway essentially showed up at the scene of the crime and knew in five screen minutes that the crime was committed by Crown.  Come on!!  I clearly enjoyed the more recent version of the film better...part of this is also due to the fact that I think Pierce Brosnan plays rich guys better than the tough-guy McQueen does.

Rating:  Matinee
Bellview rating of the 1999 version:  $9.50 Show

"The African Queen"

Humphrey Bogart & Katherine Hepburn star in this romantic adventure set in Africa, and I was anticipating that the star power of the Bogie/Hepburn connection would just blow me away.  I was half right.  The connection the two share throughout the film--set mostly on the ship of riverboat captain Charlie Allnut (Bogart), the African Queen--is special and both of their characters are very likable for varying reasons.  But, I thought the beginning of the film through about the midway point is very, v e r y slow and I had a hard time staying awake as Charlie told Rose (Hepburn) about how to tell how deep the river was by the way the water flowed.  Zzzzz....it picks up again by the end, as Rose convinces Charlie to attack a German sealiner with homemade torpedoes, but not enough to save the film, in my mind.  Of course, this is the 17th-best movie of all time (as judged by those "experts" at AFI), so maybe I am barking up the wrong tree.  It just didn't do it for me!

Rating:  Matinee

"The Bridge on the River Kwai"

Great stuff.  The late Alec Guinness stars as Colonel Nicholson, an officer of the British army that has been captured and sent to a dangerous prison camp in Japan.  His struggle to lead his captured troops to build a bridge over a well-traveled river drives the storyline, but his performance is flawless and shows you why he won the 1957 Best Actor Oscar given out the following year.  (The film won seven Oscars, including Best Picture.)  The most impressive thing about this film to me was the cinematography, though...given the year this film was made, it is beautifully shot and is capped by the awesome bridge sequence at the end of the film.  The screenplay was written by Pierre Boulle (and taken from his novel); he is the same guy that wrote the novel "Planet of the Apes."  Talk about pedigree!

Rating:  Opening Weekend

"The Manchurian Candidate"

Frank Sinatra is a monster!!  This 1962 tale of political intrigue was great, and its well-rounded cast includes Janet Leigh ("Psycho") and Angela Lansbury.  In fact, although Sinatra is big-time here, he is topped by a ruthless Lansbury as the mother of a Congressional Medal of Honor winner (Laurence Harvey) that has been brainwashed while serving for the US Army in 1950s Korea.  This role is as far from her most recent popular role on "Murder, She Wrote" as you can get.  And, this movie--like all of the other films on this list of seven films--has a knockout ending.  What ever happened to movies that have a great ending anymore?  Back in the 50s and 60s, it seems like every movie I have seen had a great ending!

Rating:  Opening Weekend

"Lawrence of Arabia"

You know how you ask some people if they have seen a movie, and their response is, "Oh, I've seen parts of that."  I NEVER say that.  Who sees parts of movies?  You can't get the gist of what a movie really is unless you see it all.  With that in mind, I am willing to bet that 99% of the people on this list have not seen all of "Lawrence of Arabia" for various reasons...the biggest one being that the film is a whopping three hours and 36 minutes long.  If you can stay awake through all of it, you get one of the most beautiful set of scenes in history.  This was Peter O'Toole's **first** movie.  He delivers an Oscar-nominated performance in this 1962 Best Picture winner that also features some white guys playing Arabs.  This movie is just so great to look at to see the little things, but the blank, bleak look of a sandstorm is something to behold.  The acting is strong as director David Lean (who, in ten years' time directed this film, "The Bridge on the River Kwai" AND "Doctor Zhivago"...wow) shows us a Cairo-stationed British officer named T.S. Lawrence (O'Toole) that is sent to follow the movements of Arabian forces led by the mysterious Prince Faisel (Alec Guinness).  There is much more to it than that, of course, and by the time it is all over, you really get into the heart of a man that is one with the desert and his newfound people.

Rating:  Opening Weekend

 

Comments?  Drop me a line at justin@bellviewmovies.com.

 

Bellview Rating System:

"Opening Weekend":  This is the highest rating a movie can receive.  Reserved for movies that exhibit the highest level of acting, plot, character development, setting...or Salma Hayek.  Not necessarily in that order. 

"$X.XX Show":  This price changes each year due to the inflation of movie prices; currently, it is the $9.50 Show.  While not technically perfect, this is a movie that will still entertain you at a very high level.  "Undercover Brother" falls into this category; it's no "Casablanca", but you'll have a great time watching.  The $9.50 Show won't win any Oscars, but you'll be quoting lines from the thing for ages (see "Office Space"). 

"Matinee":  An average movie that merits no more than a $6.50 viewing at your local theater.  Seeing it for less than $9.50 will make you feel a lot better about yourself.  A movie like "Blue Crush" fits this category; you leave the theater saying "That wasn't too bad...man, did you see that Lakers game last night?" 

"Rental":  This rating indicates a movie that you see in the previews and say to your friend, "I'll be sure to miss that one."  Mostly forgettable, you couldn't lose too much by going to Hollywood Video and paying $3 to watch it with your sig other, but you would only do that if the video store was out of copies of "Ronin."  If you can, see this movie for free.  This is what your TV Guide would give "one and a half stars." 

"Hard Vice":  This rating is the bottom of the barrel.  A movie that only six other human beings have witnessed, this is the worst movie I have ever seen.  A Shannon Tweed "thriller," it is so bad as to be funny during almost every one of its 84 minutes, and includes the worst ending ever put into a movie.  Marginally worse than "Cabin Boy", "The Avengers" or "Leonard, Part 6", this rating means that you should avoid this movie at all costs, or no costs, EVEN IF YOU CAN SEE IT FOR FREE!  (Warning:  strong profanity will be used in all reviews of "Hard Vice"-rated movies.)