Union Station

William Holden is one of my favorite actors of all time. I really didn't know anything about him until I was watching an old rerun of Magnum P.I. and Thomas Magnum said that William Holden was one of his favorite actors and his favorite movie was Stalag 17. I then got Stalag 17 from the library and loved it. I then got other Holden movies such as Sunset Boulevard and Sabrina and decided that Thomas Magnum was right - this guy is a great actor. Since then I've seen about 20 or more of his movies. And this is one of them.

In this classic crime drama, Union Station starts with a train ride where a young lady (Nancy Olson, who also starred in Sunset Boulevard) notices two suspicious characters getting on the train that she is riding, then notices one of them has a gun. She reports the issue to one of the conductors, but gets little empathy. Begrudgingly, the issue is reported and Lt. William Calhoun of the train police is brought in to investigate. Once the police get hot on the trail, they realize that another young lady may have been kidnapped and it becomes a cat and mouse chase.

Made in 1950, Union Station is a classic film noir. These are the types of movies your parents grew up on. I'm acting more like my parent's age than my own - I really liked this movie.

The movie also stars the famous Irish character actor Barry Fitzgerald as Inspector Donnelly, whom you may recognize from The Quiet Man and Going My Way. Others include Jan Sterling and Parley Baer, probably best known as the voice of Ernie Keebler of the cookie world.

Union Station has a decent plot, though there are no dramatic plot twists or spans of anxious tension (by today's standards). However, for being a classic crima drama, Union Station fills that niche and fills it well. Holden, as always, is strong, yet romantic.

I give Union Station 4.4 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????

Best Laid Plans

Remember my mission to see all of Reese's movies? Well, here's another one I just saw.

When former college friend Bryce (Josh Brolin) shows up, he's treated to an evening of drinking with his old college buddy Nick (Alessandro Nivola), and some sexy romance with a girl he meets (Reese Witherspoon). However, after he wakes up and doesn't remember the evening, things start going horribly wrong. The movie then unfolds into an intricate web of deception, conspiracy, and double-crossing. Will Nick be able to help Bryce get out of this mess? Any more information than this may spoil the plot.

Best Laid Plans is Rated R for violence, adult themes, nudity (not Reese), language, and drug abuse. This psychological thriller from 1999 was directed by Mike Barker, who's best known for American Dad, and is a whopping 93 minutes long.

Best Laid Plans had a lot of potential. The plot is really not that bad - up until the end. When I got to the end, I was so disappointed that I was mad at the movie. "Are you kidding me?" I shouted. I understand that it is difficult to create a plot-twisting dramatic ending, but this ending seems like it was written by a high school drama team 10 minutes before class. 'Hey, we wrote this great movie, but the story is due at 11:30. How should we end it?'

As I stated before, if you like ole Reese, then you would certainly tolerate, if not enjoy, this movie right up until the end. But you can certainly do better than this movie. I give Best Plaid Plans 2.5 stars. Boooooooo.....

Fear

I may have mentioned before that one of my objectives is to watch all of Reese Witherspoon's movies. When I came to the realization that I liked her and looked her library of movies, there really aren't that many big hits. Sweat Home Alabama and Walk the Line come to mind. Both are a couple of my all-time favorite movies.

So thus began my mission to watch all of her movies. I've now seen her ealiest movies that she made as a child (The Man in the Moon (actually, this one was pretty good), Wildflower, Twilight (which I think is the only movie in which she gets naked), and Pleasantville).

This week I watched Fear. In Fear she plays a high school girl (she's actually 20 years old when she plays this role). She's a bit of a party girl and when her parent's decide to leave her home for the weekend, she uses the opportunity to bring home a boy. Little does she know that this boy, Dave (Mark Wahlberg) is a raging lunatic. But as any guy who's been to high school can tell you, the pretty girls always go for the crazy, mean, and stupid guys. What's the attraction???

Eventually, David moves into the family relationship and Nicole's father Steven (William Paterson) starts to question this guy. He's seems awfully chummy with his wife Laura (Amy Brenneman). Nicole starts to realize that David is not who she thinks he is when she sees him with her friend Margo (Alyssa Milano - remember when she was cute? Now she's just kind of weird).

When the family decides that it's time for David to go, David does not go quietly.

Fear is rated R for violence, sexuality, language and unemotional acting. The movie is 96 minutes long.

I say unemotional, because when your life is on the line, or you think something terrible is going to happen, your reaction isn't going to be, "Hmmm....what do we do?" It's going to be a blood-curdling scream. And it's not like the people in the movie were able to contain their emotion. They just lacked it.

The movie's only redeeming quality was the roller coaster scene. You could probably lift that off of the Internet. You'll never think of a roller coaster the same way. And did I mention that she's in a bikini in several scenes???

I did accomplish one objective - I watched another Reese Witherspoon movie. What I did not accomplish was watching a good movie. I can only give Fear 2.3 stars. It really isn't worth watching this movie unless you're a big Witherspoon fan.

Your Highness

If you like filth, foul language, inappropriate and pervasive sexual, masturbatorial, and homo-erotica dialog, you will LOVE this movie. If you don't like those kinds of things, then run away and lock yourself in a room with The Sound of Music. Julie Andrews is your friend.

Your Highness is a middle ages comedy about a young Princess Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel - who's making her rounds on gossip news, of which I could care less) who is kidnapped prior to her wedding to the young brave and worthy Prince Fabious (James Franco). His not-so-worthy overweight and unambitious brother Thadeos (Danny McBride) begrudgingly agrees to go on a mission to rescue his bride and return to the castle.

The two brothers then cross the land and seek knowledge from perverted puppets demanding sexual favors, get attacked by naked women threatening to kill them, and cross paths with the lovely and worthy warrioress, Isabell (Natalie Portman).

This movie is zany. This movie is gross. This movie is hysterical if you can tolerate it.

Directed by David Gordon Green, Your Highness is Rated R, but the unrated version would definitely be XXX. There's language, nudity, pervasive sexual references and innuendo, language, violence, and language.

The movie also stars Charles Dance as King Tallious, which I think is a reference to a penis (tally-whacker), Toby Jones as Julie the peasant helper, and Justin Therox as Leezer.

I'm not real sure how to rate this movie. With most of my friends, this movie would not warrant a discussion. In fact, it may tarnish my reputation to admit that I found parts of it funny. I might be labeled and banned for running for a political office. But to my perverted sexually-twisted friends, they'll like this movie. I'll give it an even-keeled 3 stars.

Win Win

When one thinks of Paul Giamatti, one instantly thinks of John Adams, the wildly successful mini-series on HBO, based on the book by David McCullough. Giamatti doesn't just look like John Adams, he IS John Adams.

Fast forward 200 years, John Adams stars in this comedy drama about a lawyer in New Jersey who's lawyerly life is not living up to what he had hoped it to be for him and his wife Jackie (Amy Ryan). He finds himself taking somewhat advantage of an older gentleman named Leo (Burt Young - Adrian's brother from Rocky) by becoming his guardian, then dumping him off in an assisted living facility and collecting the monthly cash. Then out of nowhere, Leo's grandson shows up to live with Leo.

Having nowhere to go for a few days until things can get settled, John Adams takes in Leo's teenage grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer), a child of few words. Trying to keep him busy, President Adams offers to take him to his moonlighting job, a high school where he is the wrestling coach. Kyle asks to wrestle with the team and the other coaches, Vigman (Jeffrey Tambor 0f Arrested Development), and Terry (Bobby Cannavale) realize they have a wrestling progeny on their hands.

But just as things are starting to look up for this wayward child, his drug-addicted and abusive mother Cindy (Melanie Lynskey) shows up to take him back with her to Ohio, and Kyle has no intentions of going back.

Directed by Thomas McCarthy, Win Win is rated R for language, and there really wasn't that much of it. And it wasn't used in vain like most movies. The movie is an hour and 40 minutes long.

I liked Win Win. My wife watched this one with me, which is a novelty in itself. She said it was just okay and that the story line was a little slow. I'll give her that. But Win Win is one of those movies that gives you hope that good things can happen. And though not ragingly funny, the movie does have its moments.

I'll give Win Win 3.9 stars.

Unfaithfully Yours

I haven't reviewed an old black and white movie lately. So here you go. A relatively obscure one. Most people have heard of Casablanca and Gone With the Wind, but what about Unfaithfully Yours?

Unfaithfully Yours stars Rex Harrison as Sir Alfred De Carter, a world famous symphony conductor. After he returns from a stint in England, Sir Alfred learns that his brother-in-law August (Rudy Valee), whom has had asked to keep an eye on his wife Daphne (Linda Darnell), (and you thought the only Daphne was from Scooby-Doo), hired an investigator to follow her rather than to 'just keep an eye on her'. However, the private investigator has revealed that Mrs. Daphne has been spending much time with Sir Alfred's personal Secretary Anthony Windborn (Kurt Kreuger). Now Sir Alfred suspects his wife's infidelity.

Throughout the remainder of the movie, Sir Alfred envisions ways to commit the perfect crime - the murder of his wife for her transgressions. His fantasizes about this treachery during his conduction of his symphony's, which drive his wild ambition, which have the effect of much aggrandized performances which mesmerizes his audiences.

Now Sir Alfred must act out his fantasy and do the deed. But will he have the courage?

Unfaithfully Yours was made in 1948, and thus was not rated by the secret society known as the MPAA. The movie has some implied violence and some subtle sexual references, harmless by today's standards.

I really enjoyed this movie and at times could not discern fact from fiction. Rex Harrison becomes the mad infatuated conductor and pulls off his role with absolute brilliance.

I read a bit about the actors in the movie and found their real lives to be just as interesting, if not more, than the actual movie. Linda Darnell, who was a very beautiful woman, fell into alcoholism and depression. She had numerous affairs and marriages, including an affair with Mickey Rooney, and was extorted and threatened. She ended up dying at the age 41 in a house fire.

Rex Harrison, on the other hand, had 6 wives, 2 of whom committed suicide, and 1 died of leukemia.

I really like old "talkies" as my wife calls them. This one was no different. I'll give Unfaithfully Yours 4.1 stars.