Entries in the Category "charles laughton"
Movie Reviews: Listmania edition
So last summer, I decided to run through the AFI 100 Best Movies lists. There are several other AFI lists, among them 100 Best Thrillers, 100 Best Romances, 100 Best Comedies, 25 Best Musicals (the AFI was tiring at that point, I guess?) and so on. Here are some recent cross-offs.
It’s a Gift (1934)
AFI 100 Best Comedies # 58
Of all those lists, which I am always keeping track of, the Best Comedies is the one that appeals to me the least. Movies like It’s a Gift are why. Some old comedies are just not that funny anymore. Forgive me. W.C. Fields, in this movie, did not make me laugh, he made me bored. (The Marx brothers I also found atrociously unfunny, though as a peace offering, I present Chaplin and Keaton. Those dudes are still funny in 2010.) (Howard Lloyd, too. See below.)
There was also a certain tone to this movie—harried suburban dad type thing—which bugged me intensely. See the opening scene, where Fields is desperately trying to get to his bathroom mirror for a shave but his kids keep swooping in and getting in his way. The audience is supposed to be laughing at his frustration, but I’m like “JUST TELL THEM YOU WERE THERE FIRST. OR SAY ‘I’M THE DAD, THAT’S WHY.’ OR SOMETHING.” It’s kind of a common theme in movies, especially comedies: men who are so put-upon by their children and their harpy wives. I don’t like that theme when it happens today, but I especially can’t stomach it coming from the 1930s. I just have trouble feeling sorry for a guy whose mother couldn’t legally vote, whose wife could get arrested for buying birth control, and whose daughter can’t wear pants to school.
The Freshman (1925)
AFI 100 Best Comedies # 79
So this one, unlike the W.C. Fields movie, was hilarious. I sat there watching it really late one night, just giggling helplessly. It’s a silent film, starring Harold Lloyd, and he plays a guy going off to college who has a lot of weird ideas about how he’s going to make friends. For example, every time he introduces himself to somebody, he does a little dance. He thinks this works.
The intertitles (in silent films, those little cutaways to dialogue and necessary description) are clever and smirky. The college Lloyd attends is “Tate University, a large football stadium with a college attached,” and so, naturally, Lloyd decides that the thing to do to become popular is to join the football team. There’s a girl and a bully and this insane scene with a disintegrating tuxedo. At their best, silent comedies are the perfect combination of smart and silly, and (at least in my experience) this is one of the best.
Ball of Fire (1941)
AFI 100 Best Comedies # 92
Very funny love story with Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper. He’s a straight-arrow linguistics professor who’s studying American slang, and she’s a saucy nightclub performer with lots to teach him. He lives with seven other doddery old professors who gawk around Stanwyck like she’s some delightful new species they’ve discovered. There’s sort of a Snow White and the Seven Dwarves-thing going on, plus a mobster-related subplot.
Plus Barbara Stanwyck! She’s awesome.
Click ahead for many more.
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Epic Wednesday: Ancient Rome
Due to last month's move, and the attendant difficulties, I've not been making the progress on my movie list that I should have by this point in the summer.
So, starting yesterday, I established Epic Wednesday to knock off two to four movies in one day, preferably those which are "epic" in nature (i.e. insanely long) or those which are part of a series. Though I got a bit of a late start, I made it through Spartacus (3 hours, 18 minutes) and Ben-Hur (3 hours, 34 minutes). Spartacus is about the uprising of slaves, trained as gladiators, in ancient Rome. Ben-Hur is about the conflict between Jews and Romans in the Roman-ruled Jewish-inhabited historical land of Judea.
How did the films compare?
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Reviews: Classic adventures
Stagecoach
Mutiny on the Bounty
I watched these two on the same day; in fact, they were my first two official list efforts.
Stagecoach was not that bad, I guess, fast-paced and full of what in the 1930s passed for action. Sometimes when I watch these really old movies with great reputations, I discover that the story is unexpectedly clever or inventive, though I can’t say that was the case here; the story was fairly average. That could mean either that it was basically a vehicle for John Wayne (this movie was his breakout performance) or (and this is often the case with old movies, too) the movie had a hand in establishing the now-familiar theme. Anyway, it was entertaining enough for 90 minutes; if I was really bored, I might even watch it again.
I can’t say I paid a hell of a lot of attention to Mutiny on the Bounty. I like Charles Laughton, one of the ugliest actors to ever become a movie star, and I love Clark Gable, but, like George Clooney these days (and don’t think I’m the first person to make the Clooney-Gable connection; I’m so not) he’s playing to his strengths when he’s being witty and charming, as opposed to when he’s being Big Action Star or Serious Leading Man. And I really couldn’t tell which of those two this movie was asking him to be (or whether the movie even asked that question; old movies tend to be more generically ambiguous than those of today).
Mutiny on the Bounty was TCM’s Essentials feature, which means it was introduced by this season’s host, Alec Baldwin, and though I wanted to like it for Alec’s sake (he raved), I couldn’t seem to get a foothold in the story. They were on the ship, then they were on an island, then they were back on the ship, and I kept leaving the room to get my laundry (got about four loads done during this flick) and I couldn’t follow. Also, I was expecting some big action scene with swords and whatnot when the actual mutiny happened; I either missed that, or it did not happen. A closer watch would certainly have served me well here, but I can’t say I will prioritize that too highly in the future. Especially this summer when my movie-watching time is at a premium.