jayson-4

For years friends expressed amazement that I had never watched "Nip/Tuck" -- just my kind of show, they insisted. And so, spurred by the recent assault of pre-season publicity, I decided to pay a first-time visit to Nip/Tuck last night. I was expecting sly and witty satire. What I found instead (in repeat episodes that focused on a serial mangler and a deranged racist) was a puerile, unrelenting torrent of violence and sadism. Robotic and/or hysterical acting, moronic plot contortions, and enough deep shadow (in Miami, yet) to make Edgar Ulmer spin like a top. It was like watching Joel Schumacher direct Ricky Martin as Hannibal Lecter. Nice to know what my friends think of my taste.

1939 may have been the shiniest of Hollywood's Golden Years, but this gilded stinker should certainly keep us from getting too gassy about the whole thing.

Yes, the principals are pretty, and given that (if you can believe the biographical info) Darnell had barely entered puberty by the time she was outfitted in this ermine-lined straitjacket, she acquits herself fairly well (altho her girlish piping seems bizarre vis a vis the later, memorable alto of "Letter to Three Wives").

But if you ever needed proof that Tyrone Power was no Cary Grant, brother, stop here. His double-takes and eye-rolling are appalling and his comic timing non-existent. Power looks heroic in a dinner jacket, but otherwise he's just plain rotten here.

So is most of the dialogue. And the direction.

I suppose "Day-Time Wife" merits some historical attention as one more '30's "comedy of remarriage," but its essential feature is its mind-boggling stupidity.

Catch this oddity the next time TCM drags it out of the pit. This vehicle for the grand old warhorse Marjorie Main features some of the Golden Age's greatest character actors and the talented and beautiful (if ultimately tragic) Susan Peters. But the sub-sitcom setups, rotten writing, inferior direction and editing, and at least one perverse (if not sickening) plot turn make this an unintentionally creepy little "B" picture indeed.

"Tish" was no doubt a tryout for the dazzling Peters (who the same year would appear to far greater effect in "Random Harvest"), but given how short her film resume is, it's a shame that this thing has to feature so prominently on it.

If you need proof that MGM didn't turn out "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "Mrs. Miniver" twice a week, seek no more.

It's quite possible that not a single motive or action in this entire film resembles anything human. Look at what you can learn from it: You receive a phone call in a supermarket that threatens your family? Don't hesitate to let your wife go off by herself to get "one last thing." One of your kids is shot in the schoolyard by a coke-crazed gang member? By all means let your other kid finish out the school day. And above all, try to involve yourself in one of the most ineptly choreographed climactic fight sequences in the history of cinema. There are literally hundreds of stroke-inducing moments in this truly moronic, dime store Cinemascope mess.

"Key Witness" seems to have sprung from some kind of weirdly fastidious "social consciousness" of its period, as if it were the philosophical love child of Ronald-Reagan liberals. But whatever its context, the film now appears to have been constructed by Martians with powerful telescopes.

If you're going to serve up merely a succession of smartass campy jokes (dotted with a little naive social criticism), you're taking a huge chance with your audience's patience. If you aspire, more sensibly, to place the jokes within a deeper fable/parable/satire, you have to understand some fundamental rules of storytelling, such as: Your audience will accept the impossible, but not the improbable. I, for one, am willing to buy that a guy would and could build a robot wife who also functioned as a cash machine. But I refuse to believe that she would dispense singles. [END SPOILER]

Most of the jokes are silly and self-indulgent. The plot makes no sense. The actors are squashed under the director's and producers' elephantiasis. Go! Enjoy!

Strange musical stew with a puppyish Lew Ayres and a soft-focus Jeanette MacDonald making an unlikely romantic pair. The score is, shall we say, oddly eclectic, ranging from Victor Herbert (surprise!) to Ella Fitzgerald. Worth catching, though, for the final reel, which features possibly the screwiest musical number ever to appear in a "golden-age" MGM film (via Busby Berkeley). This one's beyond description -- not even Harlow singing or Crawford dancing comes close.

Absurd cynical evil dreck.

Joe E. Brown is a member of that exclusive club of actors (such as "Singin' in the Rain's" Jean Hagen) who would probably be forgotten but for one role that made them immortal. (You may at one time have been exposed to Brown's "Nobody's perfect.") Before today, I'd have run out of Brown roles after a second (Cap'n Andy in "Showboat").

But TCM, bless its heart, has been running a festival of Brown films from the early sound era, which showcase the young Joe as a superb physical comedian as well as the yowling rubberface we remember so fondly.

"You Said a Mouthful" seems typical of Brown's early films: The naive and good-hearted Joe gets himself caught up in a sticky situation that is ultimately resolved through a display of goofy yet surprisingly impressive physical prowess (reminiscent of, although nowhere nearly as surreal as, Keaton's). And because of the physical nature of the comedy, much of the action takes place outdoors, which makes the films seem fresher and more grounded in reality, in spite of all the old cars and "funny" clothes. Also (even though I've seen nothing I would call vulgar or even risque), the fact that these films were made before the stranglehold of the Production Code seems to allow for a much fresher attitude towards physical expression (including the occasional glimpse of a little harmless flesh) than you'd see in films made just a few years later (and which now seem far more antique).

Is it time for a re-appreciation of Joe E. Brown?

This evening I watched "Rebecca" for, oh, probably the 37th time. It's still and always a matchless blend of art and hokum. Much as I love it, though, I can't avoid the giggles every time Joan Fontaine (do doubt bowing to the director's will) collapses into one of those achingly long doubletakes, underscored by symphonic schmaltz straight out of -- omigod, I finally got it! -- "Bride of Frankenstein." Yes, it turns out that both scores were composed by Franz Waxman, and I'm astonished that it took me so long to catch on. And now I'm going to stay up all night wondering what parallels Waxman saw in the two stories...

Errol Flynn blah blah gallant blah blah Olivia de Havilland blah lovely blah blah blah don't make 'em like that anymore blah blah blecch.

Yeah, they're all glamorous and "heroic" beyond belief. Literally. This movie is absolute hogwash as history, romanticizing the unfortunate, ignoble, idiotic truth. And the I'll spit in the eye of the first person who says, "It's only a movie." It shouldn't be the business of movies to falsify life.

And much worse: Watch the famous climactic charge closely, and note the carnage. Stunt horses? Trip wires. If you can contentedly watch this horror show knowing how many animals (and extras, for that matter) were abused to the point of torture, forgive me if I avoid you like the plague.

I just caught "Courage Under Fire" for the first time since its initial release. I'd forgotten how powerful it was and how superior the performers -- Washington, Phillips, the young Matt Damon, and especially Meg Ryan (proving she's so much more than "adorable"). More than anything, as I watched it I wondered: "Courage Under Fire" (only seven years old) is, to put it mildly, skeptical of the U.S. military establishment. In today's rah-rah, jingoistic, lowest-common-denominator-pleasing megaconglomerate Hollywood, could a film like this ever get made?

A note to all the kids in the audience: Go out and rent a very old (1967) movie called "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." (It's a transcription of what used to be thought of as a Broadway musical.) Pop it in your playback device, and just as someone appears to be on the verge of singing and/or dancing, fast-forward until that's passed. Repeat this as often as necessary, until (about 27 minutes later) "The End" appears on your screen. This'll give you a relatively painless notion of what it's like to sit through the six-and-one-half-hour "adorable"-musical-comedy cue that is "Down With Love." Then go see "Reloaded" for the seventh time.

In the early 1930's Eddie Cantor was one of the biggest stars in the world, and "Kid Millions" will show you why. Cantor was energetic, wry, occasionally cutting (without heaping on the cruelty), sweet, and just plain funny, and it's a shame that most people today don't have the faintest idea of who he was. But then, that's increasingly true of Groucho, too. What to do with such a world?

"Kid Millions" has lots of incidental pleasures, including the presence of the ridiculously young Nicholas Brothers, Ann Sothern, and Ethel Merman (who once again proves why she was just too "big," even for grandly produced spectacles like this one). Perhaps most interesting, from a film-history perspective, is the elaborate "Ice Cream Factory" sequence, which was shot in still-experimental 3-strip Technicolor. The earlier (2-strip) Technicolor could only render shades of cyan and magenta (often mistaken today for fading), while the new process was explosively full-spectrum. Audiences at the time must have been astonished.

At 40, Matthew Broderick is pale, fleshy, and a little tired. "Virility" is not the first word he brings to mind. And of course virility is the signature trait of Prof. Harold Hill, the strutting, beaming, cosmically charming hero of "The Music Man." So Broderick was a far from ideal casting choice. Yet if the director, choreographer, and d.p. had been more sensitive to Broderick's own brand of charm -- this is Ferris Bueller we're talking about -- something new and interesting might have come of this "Music Man." But the direction is slack, the choreography uninspired (especially in Broderick's case, even with an obvious dance double), and the cinematography/visual composition just plain weird (it often looks like a truncated pan-and-scan of a Cinemascope film, which of course it can't possibly be). As a result, this film contains what may be history's worst rendering of "Ya Got Trouble."

Broderick needed a friend, and he never found one here.

And who the blazes decided that we needed another Victor-Garber boogie man -- as the bulbously pompous Mayor Shinn, for crying out loud? Garber's Shinn is just plain creepy (and this actor is capable of much better work). The rest of the cast is quite okay and the kid who plays Winthrop something more. Far above them all is the ever-surprising Kristin Chenoweth, with her oddly beautiful, sensitive face and extraordinarily nuanced singing voice. But none of their efforts is quite enough.

These Disney musical rehashes have gotten a surprising amount of praise. I've found them all listless and amateurish, as if none of their creators had ever heard of Vincente Minelli, Stanley Donen or Rouben Mamoulian. These new would-be musical geniuses should lock themselves in a room for a month with "The Bandwagon," "Singin' in the Rain" and "Love Me Tonight" before they even think of trying again.

In a film that is an homage to the art of subtext -- that explores from a thousand angles the agony of the overt -- the most astonishing subtextual element is Julianne Moore's pregnancy. Todd Haynes has spoken of the costume designer's challenge to hide the fact that Moore was six months (!) pregnant when shooting began. This challenge is only partially met. Nothing can hide Moore's fertility-goddess ripeness. Her waist is full, her breasts are prominent, and her rear end -- in some shots as big as the Hindenburg - is mesmerizing. She's the embodiment of fecundity, which is downright astonishing in light of the explicit barrenness of her character's existence.

With its extraordinary theme, beautiful production, and brilliant performances, "Far From Heaven" is a strange and wonderful film. Go see it.

Well, maybe it isn't that bad. Some moments are touching, others genuinely harrowing. And Jeff Bridges always comes up with something surprising. But, "true story" though it may be, "White Squall" is overwhelmed by its obvious schematic and Ridley Scott's signature gloss. Each young crewmember has a stamped-on singular defect, Scott Wolf's tomcruisy precociousness is particularly grating, and for all the magnificent ocean scenery and blather about boys being forged into men, we're shown precious little of the day-to-day grunt/teamwork that's at the core of the whole business. Add to this the greatest assemblage of immaculate white t-shirts and bronzed, hairless torsos since Abercrombie met Fitch, and a potentially gritty, moving story lies trapped in amber.

Wanna know what's most wrong with this mostly wrongheaded movie? Judi Dench. Yeah, the Great Judi Dench (and I do think she's great, in other movies). I sat there wondering what in blazes she was doing to Lady Bracknell, and then it hit me: She's playing the subtext, for crying out loud. She's working her butt off to breathe life into the old warthog. The problem is, Lady Bracknell has no subtext. Lady Bracknell is a comic conceit, possibly the greatest ever. But she is not, I repeat, not a human being. She has no life, no backstory. She is just a supremely funny thing, and in no way should we be made to think about the womanly heart beating beneath the artifice.

Lord knows the cast is competent (and I would happily watch Reese Witherspoon read from the Knightsbridge phone directory) But for all its hot-air balloons and other cinematic froufrou, this version of "Earnest" is fatally earthbound. Whatever realm "Earnest" may inhabit, it is absolutely not the "real" world, and the more the director shoves "authentic" settings in our faces, the more this immortal souffle begins to taste like day-old crepes.

Go rent the 1952 Anthony Asquith version. It's as artificial as all get-out, and it's so much more real.

This film is often disparaged as the "least" version of Show Boat, and I can't say that I disagree. It abbreviates the story, discards a sinfully large chunk of the score, and virtually eliminates the key characters of Joe and Queenie. And it pushes the limits of MGM Technicolor to the breaking point; the sets and the actors seem to have been doused with radium.

The blinding color notwithstanding, the production is actually rather cheapjack and can't hold a candle to James Whale's 1936 version. Just compare the pivotal "After the Ball" sequence in the two films: The MGM rendering is naive and listless, while Whales' b&w sequence is so beautifully art-directed, populated, costumed and photographed that it actually comes off as the more colorful of the two. And while Irene Dunne as Magnolia is sometimes a little hard to take (especially when she "shuffles"), she seems far more authentic than Kathryn Grayson.

The MGM version has one virtue, however, that's unmatched in any other: Ava Gardner as Julie. Although her singing was dubbed in the release print (even if the original tracks reveal her superior singing voice), the Ava Gardner of 1951, photographed in ridiculous old Technicolor, was quite possibly the most beautiful creature ever to appear before a camera. In a couple of closeups (especially her last), she is literally breathtaking, and those shots alone make the film worth viewing.

By the way, the great Lena Horne has often said that she was promised the role of Julie (having acquited herself so admirably in the Show Boat sequence of "Til the Clouds Roll By") and then was betrayed by the bigwigs at MGM. But this has never made any sense to me. Julie is supposed to be a woman of multi-racial parentage who passes for white. Lena Horne was (and is) beautiful, elegant, uniquely talented, and unmistakably a woman of color. How, exactly, was that supposed to work?

Slow, relatively uneventful (even with that plot kicker), a little sloppy, and far from the worst movie I've seen this month.

It's true that Affleck and Paltrow don't ignite the celluloid, but this can hardly come as a surprise. Affleck's a handsome and competent actor, but really, has he ever had chemistry with anyone other than Matt Damon? (Okay, maybe a little with Joey Lauren Adams, but she's so fiery she'd combust with a fire hydrant.) In any case, the Affleck and Paltrow characters are both attractive, intelligent, and kind-hearted, and they make a wholly credible couple. Sure I wish they were Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, but they're not, and I can live with that.

Given the big-secret plot hook, the story's fairly credible, with the exception of an extremely unlikely ad campaign and a mishandled televised-courtroom sequence. (Why is it that filmmakers, who are literally in bed with advertising and tv people -- who ARE ad and tv people -- can never seem to get those professions right?)

From a technical angle, "Bounce" is generally competent (not that the story provides much of a challenge in that department), although it does have one odd continuity problem: In a couple of unrelated beach-condo scenes (that were obviously filmed at the same time), Paltrow's hair and eyebrows are a different (and more glamourous) style and color than they are in surrounding scenes. This wouldn't matter so much if Paltrow's brown-and-bushy-browed mousiness weren't such a key aspect of her characterization, but it is, and on a film with this budget someone should have noticed.

Still, there's infinitely worse garbage on cable these days (most of which feature "muthaf**ker" as a term of endearment). At least you won't feel unclean after watching "Bounce."

First, a confession: I'm not really in a position to review this film (which I caught this evening on Bravo), because I found it so deeply and frequently annoying that I spent as much time surfing away from it as watching it.

I will make one observation, however. Fairly late in the film -- which is set in the earliest days of photography -- Minnie Driver's character is shown making a portrait of two young women. Driver -- ostensibly a talented photographer -- removes the lens cover (there being, of course, no mechanical shutters at the time) for the requisite VERY long exposure. While the image is being exposed, she essentially tells her giggling subjects to say "Cheese." Now what do you think the finished photo would look like under such circumstances? A messy, worthless blur? Bingo.

Virtually nothing in this film -- set design, presentation of early photo methods, character motivation -- made any sense to me. But, as I said, perhaps I missed something as I feverishly tapped away at my remote.

Years ago, while reviewing a piece of crud called "The Adventurers," Pauline Kael noted that we had reached a point in the art of filmmaking where even idiotic stories were presented in exquisite bindings. I thought of this while watching "A.I." Spielberg's mastery of film technique is breathtaking. And he must be engaged by "big" ideas, or why would he bother? Yet he seems incapable of sustaining a coherent argument around the critical issues he raises in A.I., and the result is a big, beautiful, sloppy, mind-numbing mess. I couldn't bring myself to walk out on so serious and sincere an effort, but Lord how I prayed for it to end.

BTW, did anyone else notice Jude Law's homage to "Clockwork Orange?" via Gene Kelly? It was the only moment in the film I truly enjoyed.

Original. Beautifully made. Surprisingly touching. Funny as all hell.

Recently the "New York Times" published a review of "Six Feet Under" that was so snide and dismissive that it came across as a vendetta. The writer disdained the concept, the writing, and -- most galling of all -- the entire cast.

What twaddle. "Six Feet Under" has tons of weaknesses. The direction's unsteady and the camerawork most of the time either too static or too damned artsy. And often the writing is obvious and annoying, in that hit-us-over-the-head-with-exposition-until-we-scream fashion that's so popular these days. But just as often the writing soars, and there's hardly an episode that doesn't move me to tears in a way that's entirely legitimate and gratifying. Most of all -- and here's where I think the "Times" critic is nuts -- I love the actors. Rachel Griffiths and Peter Krause are just about perfect, and Michael C. Hall (possibly *the* quintessential NY theatre guy) is surprising and appealing as the complex and not always admirable David.

Perfect show? No. But a good and worthy one.

For all its gloss and signature moments, this is surely among the dopiest of Hitchcock's American films. The fault lies not with the production design (slick, often striking) or the actors (the usually marzipan Robert Cummings is surprisingly credible), but with a script so preachy and unmoored that it sounds like it was written by the Minister of Propaganda during a helium overdose.

Even the editing-usually one of the glories of a Hitchcock film-is surprisingly sloppy. Example: The Cummings character is locked in a pantry of a Manhattan mansion. He cleverly melts a sprinkler head (his captors apparently having thought nothing of leaving him with matches and other mischief-making devices) and sets off the house's alarm system. There follows much scurrying among the servants, and the next thing we know, Cummings is out on the street in the crowd observing the `fire'. We can guess how he got there, but it's still as if he were teleported, and it's a cheat.

Some of the setpieces (the meeting with the handsome, refined `model citizen' who turns out to be Corruption itself, for example) are themes Hitchcock explored again and again, usually to better effect. And one encounter-with a kindly, effusive blind man in a remote cabin-is straight out of Bride of Frankenstein. Now that is one strange antecedent.

Still, there are rewards, chief among them the black-comedy shootout in Radio City Music Hall and, of course, the dazzling confrontation at the Statue of Liberty. And then there's Norman Lloyd's saboteur, surely one of the grandest creeps Hitchcock ever conjured.

I think my favorite part was the severed heads on sticks...

There's been a lot of hoo-hah about Ms. Close's superannuated Nellie Forbush, but I think this is a relatively minor issue -- really a matter of cranky foiled expectations. Nothing demands that Nellie be 22; narrow-minded provincialism was and is not unknown in people over 40. And making Nellie and Emile a more evenly mature match adds a nice counterpoint to the youthful Cable/Liat romance.

I think the real problem lies in the decision to pour on the blood and guts.

Presented just a few years after the end of World War II, the original "South Pacific" was a far cry (most would say huge step forward) from 1920's frivolities like "No, No, Nanette" and even more immediate folksy precursors like "Oklahoma." The American theatre seemed primed for a new kind of musical realism, and "South Pacific" bravely served up real people confronting life-and-death issues, with nary a tap-dancing ingenue in sight. Nevertheless, it didn't completely abandon the old, sentimental/comical musical traditions (which, after all, had been brought to their greatest glory by Richard Rodgers and his pals), and there was -- and is -- a limit to how much gritty realism the aesthetic could sustain.

I haven't read the original Michener stories on which "South Pacific" was based, and they may very well have featured severed heads. But in the context of "Some Enchanted Evening," such imagery was anathema to Rodgers & Hammerstein, and it remains alarmingly discordant today.