Brilliant.

This movie is so sweet, yet manages never to be saccharine. It’s a very simple story of a 34-year-old butcher who lives at home with his mom and is daily faced with the question of when he is going to get married. Similar to the concept of “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” Marty has tried to find love but has been so unsuccessful he is on the verge of giving up completely. Then he meets a Chemistry teacher at a local dance hall whose date has dumped her midway through because she’s such a “dog.” Ernest Borgnine is so loveable as Marty it is no wonder that he won the Oscar for Best Actor. A great film.

I really wanted to like this film, which led to a continuing sense of disappointment as I watched it. The idea of updating the Shakespeare play into a musical set in the ‘30s was wonderful. They added music from that era which managed to fit into the storyline quite well. The production was gorgeous. But eveything was just a mess. Switching between the Shakespeare, the newsreels and the songs created definite tempo problems for the audience. I felt it would have been better if they had taken out the Shakespearian verse and simply updated the entire play. It seemed as if the casting was done because this one was good at the Shakespeare, this one was good at the singing, this one at the dancing, etc., and hardly anyone was good at all of it. Especially Alicia Silverstone. I loved her in Clueless as well, but is that a good enough reason to keep casting her in roles she can’t handle? A real struggle to get through.

I was hesitant to watch this film because I did not really like Howl’s Moving Castle, but my five-year-old stepdaughter needed some entertaining so we decided to try this. She was enchanted (although a little scared in parts) and so was I. The animation is beautiful, but the story, a twisted fairy tale with ghosts, spirits and monsters, was engrossing. You never knew where it was going. It reminded me a lot of Alice in Wonderland. Highly recommended.

Of course you watch this movie because of Marilyn Monroe. The cutesy idea of a brash cowboy seeing the world for the first time and deciding to get himself a girl (if she likes it or not) hasn’t really aged that well. The funniest moment was at the rodeo when they decided there wasn’t enough animal cruelty and made a monkey distract the bulls. I was shocked to find out that Don Murray (Beau) received an Oscar nomination for his performance. Really? 99% of his lines were delivered in a grating yell. Monroe does better, but I don’t think it is the highlight of her career. This was the first color film I had seen of Monroe, and I was shocked at how much make-up they poured on the girl. Honestly, I thought she looked very clownish – the yellow hair, white make-up, and red lips were distractingly unnatural. Not a complete bust, but I doubt it is many people’s favorite.

I enjoyed this movie until the very end when they featured the different songs from the new play. They gave off the feeling of watching vignettes from totally different movies – the only one which even plausibly fit into the plot of the play was the last dance sequence. The others, although cute and catchy, came off as being thrown in despite the fact that they didn’t enhance the story.

Unfortunately I watched the much, much better “Anne of the Thousand Days” about a month before I saw this film, so comparisons were inevitable as it dealt with almost the exact period in history from beginning to end. The relationship between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is one of the most interesting and world-changing in history so I don’t believe they will ever stop making movies about it, but hopefully they won’t make any more like this one. What “The Other Boleyn Girl” does is remove the politics from the story. It is a perfect example of people assuming that history was inevitable and presenting it as such. It practically deletes any mention of what Henry’s divorce meant to England as a world power or to religion. Let no one be mistaken – the politics and effects of their relationship is what makes it so interesting, not the fact that they were very briefly in love. After all, Henry VIII slept with a lot of women. When you take the politics out of the movie, you not only dumb it down, but you leave the audience with simply a love story in pretty clothes. Which I guess could have been made to work – they did manage to get a very talented cast. But for a story which is boiled down to just the passion – it is a passionless piece of work. And the fact that it tried to give any credability at all to the incest charge was the hammer in the coffin. It was, however, very beautifull shot – so 2 stars.

I don’t think I “got” this movie, but I also don’t think that the director (Jame Campion) gave her audience much of a chance with this mess of a story. The first part was very interesting – Kate Winslet is an Australian girl on vacation in India and ends up joining a cult. Her family manages to trick her back to Australia, and hire a cult exitist, P.J. (Harvey Keitel) to unbrainwash her. Winslet is good in the role and pretty much the only saving factor to the whole film. I couldn’t buy into the “love” story since it basically was Keitel taking advantage of an incredibly f-ed up young woman. Maybe that was the point, but the film came off as much more disturbing than profound.

“The China Syndrome” reminded me a lot of “All the President’s Men” – an intelligent suspense centered around the news. Instead of newspaper reporting, we have Jane Fonda, a pretty news anchor pigeon-holed by her bosses into doing the light and friendly pieces instead of real news. During a location piece about nuclear power, she and her team, including Michael Douglas (also a producer of the film), witness what they think is an “accident” but are thwarted in their attempts to put it on the news. One of the shift leaders, Jack Lemmon in a dramatic role, at first tries to reassure them about plant safety, but is driven to desperate measures when he realizes what risks the head people are taking in order to make a profit. It’s nice to see films that respect their audience’s intelligence and attention span.

This musical, the first collaboration between Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, has a cute set-up – two sailors are out on leave for three nights and head to Hollywood to find some girls. Kelly’s Joe is known as the “Sea Wolf” because of his skills with the dames, and shy Clarence (Sinatra) tags along to see if he can for once get a girl and not spend his entire leave in the library. Their plans are quickly derailed when they are picked up by the police to help bring a runaway boy (Dean Stockwell – how cute!) home to his Aunt Susie – who turns out to be a singer making ends meet by working as an extra.

The movie goes along quite nicely for the first half of it. However, at 2 hours and 20 minutes, it is too long. These are really talented people and the film showcases them each well, including the piano player Iturbi, but as it progresses it relies more and more on showcasing them individually instead of collaboratively which gives the film a fragmented feel. Probably best remembered for the animation sequence when Gene Kelly dances with Jerry from Tom and Jerry (although I must admit I like the Family Guy version with Stewie better), the film has lots of sweet moments and memorable routines.