The Quiet Man

I've never been a big fan of John Wayne. I think that's mostly because he did westerns and I don't really care for westerns. However, he did make a few movies where he didn't wear a cowboy hat. The Quiet Man was one of them.

Many actors have a counterpart of the opposite sex that often play opposite them in many movies. There's Bogey and Bacall, Tracey and Hepburn, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. John Wayne's Katharine Hepburn is Maureen O'Hara. Her most popular movie was probably Miracle on 34th Street. Other big titles were Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, How Green Was My Valley, and the original The Parent Trap.

In The Quiet Man, Wayne is an Irishman, Sean Thornton, returning to Ireland after living most of his life in America, to reclaim his family's property. Neighboring property owner Red Danaher (Victor McLaglen) wants the property, but Sean outbids him. Meanwhile, Sean falls in love with Red's sister Mary Kate (O'Hara), but Red refuses to allow him to marry her.

Sean, a former boxer, eventually wins approval, but as Sean is unaccustomed to the pride of the Irish and their customs, he has a difficult time appreciating what is important to others, which strains his marriage. He eventually loses respect from many, in addition to losing Mary Kate, and must fight to win her and everyone's respect back.

The best line of the movie is when someone asks Sean Thorton where he lived in America. He said he lived in Pittsburgh, if you can call that living. Hysterical!

The movie was filmed in color, but not by a high quality color film, so by today's standards it looks pretty bad. I initially thought it was a colorized black and white movie. The movie was mostly filmed in Ireland, home to many of the actors, including supporting actor Barry Fitzgerald.

The Quiet Man is 2 hours and ten minutes long. The movie was made in 1952 and directed by the famous John Ford, often considered the best director of all time. In fact, he won an Oscar for Best Director in The Quiet Man. The movie also won an Academy Award for Best Cinemotography. It was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Victor McLaglen), Best Art Direction, Best Sound, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

I found the movie to be a bit long and without a clear direction. As acclaimed as the movie was, I only thought it to be moderately good. I did, however, enjoy the culturally appropriate music. And I always enjoy Barry Fitzgerald, especially when he's been a wee bit to the bottle.

I give The Quiet Man an even 3 stars.

Casbah

Since we dropped the Netflix plan that delivers movies to your home, I have been watching a lot of older movies, since that is mostly what Netflix offers as movies.

This past week I watched a movie that I put in my queue that has Peter Lorre, whom you would recognize from Bugs Bunny cartoons if you didn't know him as the actor himself. The movie also has Yvonne DeCarlo in it, whom you will remember as Lillith from The Munsters. I have never considered her to be an attractive actress. After all, she was married to Herman Munster and she was more of mistress of the dark. However, in Casbah, as a young woman and not in her goulish costume - she's actually very beautiful.

The movie plot is simple. Algiers is full of thieves and Pepe Le Moko (actor\singer Tony Martin) decides to hide amongst the other thieves. While hiding out he falls in love with French tourist named Gaby (Swedish actress Märta Torén). When his ex-lover Inez (Yvonne DeCarlo) learns of his desire, she decides to work with police to help get him captured. Now Pepe must decide whether to hide or try to flee with his new French love.

Casbah was made in 1948 and directed by John Berry, one of the directors blacklisted during McCarthism for being named as a Communist. The movie was 93 minutes long and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Also starring in the movie are Austrian Hugo Hoss and Thomas Gomez, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Ride the Pink Horse.

Too old to be rated, but certainly tame enough for a PG rating, I only found Cashab moderately entertaining. As I mentioned I enjoyed looking at a young Yvonne DeCarlo, but the movie is considered a musical, though I don't think there are really that many songs. As far as older movies goes, I'll give this an average 3 stars.

Does this woman look like Lillith Munster????

The Lost Weekend

I haven't reviewed an old movie in a while. So here you go. The Lost Weekend is the Academy Award-winning movie from 1945 starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman. For those of you born after 1980, Jane Wyman was the first wife of former President Ronald Reagan. She also holds the distinction of being the only person to win an Oscar and marry a future President. That's quite an honor! Hillary Clinton never won an Oscar!

In this black and white classic, Ray Milland plays Don Birnem, a alcoholic writer who is left alone for the weekend. His girlfriend and brother try to do what they can to help keep him from drinking, but Birnem is a smart drunk. The movie follows him all weekend from buying more rye, going to the bar, reminiscences of the past, and a hospitalization. Birnem discusses taking his own life and mentions a gun he once had that he hocked for more money for alcohol.

The Lost Weekend was directed by the famous Billy Wilder and is an hour and 40 minutes long. The movie also stars lesser known (to me at least) actors such as Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling, and Frank Faylen.

I definitely like classic movies and I have been trying to watch all of the Academy Award winning movies. Unfortunately, I have to say that this will not be on the top of my list of great movies from the era. The subject matter of the movie is serious, but it lacks an element of thematic drama (is that a real thing?) or maybe some subtle humor to keep the audience in tune.

The Lost Weekend wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't the kind of movie I'll want to watch again. I'll give it just 3 stars.

L.A. Confidential

On the list of movies I need to get around to seeing, I finally got around to seeing L.A. Confidential. Based on the book of the same name by James Elloy, L.A. Confidential is set in, surprisingly enough, Los Angeles.

Set in the 1950's, Los Angeles is competing with Chicago and Washington, D.C. to be the most crooked city in America. Not only is their a lot of organized crime, but organized crime within the police department. But then Guy Pearce (Edmund Exley) is promoted to Detective Lt. He has it set in his mind that he's going to do his job the right way and without corrupting influences, much to the chagrin of Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell).

When a disgraced former cop ends up dead, Exley wants to solve the case, but is butting heads with Detect Sgt. Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) and Officer But White (Russell Crowe). But in this case of cops versus cops, Exley's investigation is turning up more than he bargained for. And he better be careful, because people close to the case start ending up dead.

L.A. Confidential has an all-star cast. In addition to those previously mentioned, Danny DeVito stars as Sid Hudgens, the magazine insider who works with the police for inside tips on hot stories, Kim Basinger, as Lynn Bracken, the love interest of many a man, and David Strathairn as Pierce Patchett, the local pimp lord.

Directed by Curtis Hanson, L.A. Confidential is Rated R for violence, language, violence, sexuality, and violence. The movie is about 2 1/2 hours long, so if you've never seen it make sure you block out a good chunk of time to watch it because you'll be glued to the screen.

I LOVED this movie and would easily watch it again. I'm actually disappointed that I never saw this movie earlier than I did. The movie was nominated for 9 Academy awards, including Best Picture. Kim Basinger won for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgeland won for Best Adapted Screenplay. Additional nominations were Best Original Dramatic Score, Best Director, Best Art Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing.

For the above reasons, I give L.A. Confidential the sparsely distributed 5 Stars.

The Hurt Locker

Another in a series of movies about war in Iraq, The Hurt Locker follows Bravo company, a group assigned to disarm IED's (Improved Explosive Devises).


The plot is not very complex and there really isn't much of a story-line in the movie. It's more on the lines of a documentary which is being reenacted. I couldn't find information stating if it was based on a compilation of true stories, but I suspect that it was. The storyline was written by Mark Boal who was embedded with a bomb squad in Iraq.


The movie follows several long sequences of events when IED's are discovered and must be disarmed. There is a lot of tension throughout the movie as Iraqi spectators gather and watch the bombs being disarmed. No one knows if any of the spectators have remotes to explode the devise or if they will come under fire during their mission.


I anxiously watched the movie from the edge of my seat wondering if the next bomb would detonate while it was being disarmed. Tension remained high throughout the entire movie. Additionally, there is a sequence where the company inadvertently rendezvous with a British outfit, one character which is played by Ralph Fiennes, and they suddenly are engaged in a firefight with insurgents from a distant home on the hillside.


The movie is a bit long - about 2 hours and 10 minutes, but I had no trouble sitting through the entire thing. The Hurt Locker is directed by Kathryn Bigelow (ex-wife of Cameron Bigelow, director of Titanic and Avatar), and she hasn't directed a big movie since K-19: The Widowmaker starring Harrison Ford in 2002.


The Hurt Locker also stars Jeremy Renner as William James (the disarmer), Anthony Mackie as JT Sanborn, the leader of the group, Brian Geraghty as Owen Eldridge, the somewhat incompetant rookie, and Christian Camargo as John Cambridge, the social worker who is concerned about your feelings.


Filmed in Jordan and Kuwait, The Hurt Locker is Rated R for war violence and language. Reading about production of the movie, it was excruciatingly hot during filming and they were shot at several times while filming only 3 miles from the Iraq border.


As you can tell, I really enjoyed this movie. I didn't leave hollering "Get 'er done, America!" like a Southern redneck. The movie really opens your eyes to the stress that our soldiers face every day in war and the movie does a great job of making you feel like you are in the middle of it.


I give The Hurt Locker the coveted 5 stars.

Bonnie & Clyde

I saw this movie for the first time a few weeks ago and it quickly rose to the top of my list of favorite movies. Made in 1967, this classic film stars a young Warren Beatty, possibly before his horse Naturally won, in addition to a very attractive 26 year old Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Gene Wilder in his first movie, and Denver Pyle as Sheriff Frank Hamer. You'll remember Denver as Uncle Jessie from the Dukes of Hazzard.

You probably know of the story of Bonnie and Clyde. It's a true story. You can read about it on Wikipedia. If you're so dumb that you don't know, it's about an outlaw named Clyde who likes to rob people, he befriends a young damsel named Bonnie and they storm across the South raising hell. In the end - they die. Sorry to give away the ending. But come on. If you didn't know that then you need to go back to middle school.

I loved Bonnie and Clyde. The action was hot, the dialog was great, and the acting was superb. Knowing the ending I was getting anxious as the movie rolled along wondering if it was getting ready to happen.

Directed by Arthur Penn, this hour and 50 minutes movie is Rated R for violence and some sexuality, but no nudity. Additionally, the movie received 2 Academy Awards - Estelle Parsons received a Best Supporting Actress Award and Burnette Guffrey received Best Cinematography and Bonnie and Clyde was selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry.

Without a doubt, Bonnie and Clyde is a 5 star movie!

Inglorious Basterds

I add movies to my movie queue through several methods. My friend Kim is also a member of Netflix, so when I see that she adds a movie, I'll check it out. She likes the artsy stuff, so I have to be careful. Another obvious method is when I see a trailer on TV that is interesting, I'll add it to my Netflix queue. Finally, I'll click on my favorite actors and actresses on IMDB or Netflix and add their new movies.

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I added Inglorious Basterds to my queue. I'm not implying early in the review that it was a bad movie. On the contrary. I thought it was a comedy. That it was not.

Inglorious Basterds stars Brad Pitt, Christopher Waltz, BJ Novak (of The Office), and a bunch of other foreign actors. Mélanie Laurent, a 26 year old French actress, plays the Jewish theater owner. She's easy on the eyes. And speaking of eyes, as is appropriate for her role, her eyes gave off a sense of deep pain. Also in the eye-candy department is Diane Kruger, a German actress.

Three minutes into the movie and I was quite certain that this was no comedy. All the people being shot with a machine gun gave that away. The movie flows like any good historical movie. Until the part where the David Bowie song starts playing. And the hand-written name tags pop on the screen.

The premise of the movie is focused around a German SS officer (Christopher Waltz) who hunts down Jews. One of the Jews in his early hunts escapes and makes her way to Paris where she takes over her deceased aunt and uncle's theater. One day she meets a soldier who turns out to be sort of a war phenom who was cast as himself in a propaganda movie. He tries to proposition her, she is then forced to host a showing of his movie, which gives her an idea.

Meanwhile, Brad Pitt is the horribly quaint Lt. Aldo Raine from Tennessee. I sound more like Carly Shay than Brad Pitt sounds like a southerner. Though I think that is by design. Lt. Raine is leading a crack commando group through France to raise hell. And hell they raise.

The movie is a bit gory and includes all of the expected violence and profanity that you would expect from a Quentin Tarantino movie. Inglorious Basterds is rated R for said violence and profanity, in addition to some sexuality and an incorrectly spelled word in the title.

I found myself drawn to this movie despite its length (2 1/2 hours) and was anxious nearly the entire time. Oh, my gosh! What's going to happen now? Additionally, if Christopher Waltz does not win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Hollywood needs to be burnt to the ground. Then again, that might not be a bad idea anyway.

Nonetheless, I think this was a great movie and freely and under no duress give this movie 4 stars.

How Green Was My Valley

One of things that I am trying to do with my movie watching is pick off the winners of the Best Picture. How Green Was My Valley was the winner in 1941. The movie is based on the book by Richard Llewellyn about life in the mining towns in Wales during the late 1800's or early 1900's from the perspective of young Huw Morgan, though now told through his eyes as an older man.

The movie stars Walter Pidgeon (who has a magnificant voice) as Mr. Gruffydd, a very beautiful Maureen O'Hara as Angharad Morgan, Huw's sister, and Roddy McDowall as Huw Morgan. Roddy is probably better known as one of the apes from Planet of the Apes during its heyday in the 1960's.

Life in the mining town was peaceful, but soon turned sour when talks of unionization started and rumors of communist ties began to be associated with different residents. Huw, appearing to have a higher intelligence than most of his townsfolk, is sent off to another town to attend school, but soon learns of the prejudices and stereostypes that afflict his town. He quickly learns to fight to protect himself and his valley's honor.

Meanwhile, rumors spread of an unholy relationship between Mr. Gruffydd, the new preacher in town, and Angharad. Though not true, the rumors destroy the reputation of the good preacher and he ends up leaving the Church and Angharad's reputation is likewise soiled.

Throughout the movie tragedies strike, mostly at the mine and the Morgan's begin to lose the members of their family and Huw has little interest in staying in the Valley. Eventually, everything good that once represented the town has disintegrated. What was once a green valley is now one covered in the gray and black slag of the mine, and the happy smiling faces of the singing townsfolk are now the quiet saddened & ruined faces of a people whose spirits have been destroyed.

How Green Was My Valley won numerous awards including Best Picture for Producer Darryl F. Zanuck, Best Director for John Ford, Best Supporting Actor for Donald Crisp for his role as Gwilym Morgan, the patriarch of the family, Best Black-and-White Cinematography, and Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration.

The Award for Best Director was significant for John Ford as it was the third year in a row that he had won the award, the others being Stagecoach in 1939, and The Grapes of Wrath in 1940.

The movie is just under 2 hours long and was produced prior to movie ratings, though there is nothing that would garner it anything other than a G-rating except that it wouldn't draw an audience unless it had a PG rating.

I read the book several years ago and admit that it is one of my favorite books. Given that, I criticize the movie for what it is missing, though if it did icnlude everything in the book the movie would be about 6 hours long. I therefore give How Green Was My Valley a hesitant 3 stars.

Slumdog Millionaire

I finally got around to watching Slumdog Millionaire. I wasn't in too much of a hurry to see this movie being that it won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In my mind this usually means that the movie sucked. Funny how my stereotypes continue to be accurate in my own mind.

Slumdog Millionaire is about a young man named Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) who is retelling the story of his life and how he knew the answers as a contestant on India's Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The movie traces his life from his early childhood growing up in the slums of India, meeting a young girl (Freida Pinto - a very attractive young lady!), a girl who's love will forever be in his heart, to the struggles with his brother and his keeper.

If you've never seen anything about India you will most likely be struck by the hopelessness and poverty that lie across the country. However, there are signs of life and a desire to do good that can overcome the evil that seems to have penetrated everything.

Throughout the movie Jamal is being held in a police station and being grilled about correctly answering so many questions on the game show. How can a slumdog know so much?

Many will find the movie inspiring, while others, like me, see this as a movie which exploits a formerly popular game show which just connects the dots in the contestants life to get the answers. I find this to be a more convenient storyline than intriguing.

The movie is 2 hours long and was directed by Danny Boyle, also known for his independent movie Trainspotting. Slumdog Millionaire is rated R for violence, disturbing images, especially of children, and some language. They also made us watch a cricket match or football (soccer) game, also worthy of an R-Rating.

Not a big fan of this movie. I give it 2 stars.