The Writer's Poke

The third in the Doris Day/Rock Hudson/ Tony Randall trilogy, and I'm surprised to find out, the best of the three.  I'd like to know more about Doris Day's hair. In this film, sometimes it looks like her normal hair, and sometimes it looks three times the size. It sort of reminds of NFL football player helmets -- the standard helmet versus the special helmet some players wear to protect their heads from concussions.  But in all seriousness, I'm guessing that Day wore wigs for at least some of the scenes in this film, but if she did and didn't wear them for all scenes, I'm just left confused. Why did she have to wear wigs in some of the scenes? And why did they have to be so big? Meanwhile, Tony Randall has a little bit better part here. In the first two films, he's a rich friend of Rock Hudson, and he goes to a psychiatrist. That's really all we know about him. In this film, he's a lawyer and neighbor, and he's got a drinking problem. He's m...

Because Pillow Talk (1959) exists, this movie should never have been made. Do I like Rock Hudson and Doris Day together on screen? Sure I do. Do I like the sex comedy plot of two people who hate each other but somehow, through convoluted circumstances, end up falling in love because the man pretends to be someone else? Yeah, that's fun.  But at least in Pillow Talk, the Rock Hudson character starts falling in love with the Doris Day character. In Lover Come Back, Jerry (Hudson) is still the womanizing guy that will do whatever to get whatever he wants. He does not, however, begin falling for Carol (Day). He's just tricking her until she finally finds out who he is.  That's the biggest difference between the two films. And yet, Jerry and Carol STILL end up married. But the marriage is one that happens simply because they end up accidently drunk on Jerry's VIP mints. Carol doesn't magically fall in love with the real Jerry. In fact, she wants to immediately annul the ...

A rather odd genre from this era called "the sex comedy."  Jan (Doris Day) is a single, professional woman. We don't know her exact age, but Day was 37, and it's likely Jan is supposed to be in her mid-30s. So it's a rather sexist question, but audience members would likely be asking it too themselves at the time: Why is she still single? The obvious answer is that she hasn't found the right man to fall in love with. Jonathan (Tony Randall) loves her, but she doesn't love him. She even lets him give her an "exploratory kiss," but the sparks don't run down her back. That's what she wants. She wants sparks.  Brad (Rock Hudson) is the man she shares a party phoneline with. She hates him, considering him a womanizing playboy. When Brad first sees her in the flesh, though, he knows that she's pretty special. He also knows that based on their past history, he doesn't have a chance with her. So her creates a whole new persona and pretend...

With a current IMDb score of 9.3/10, this film has to be in the conversation for the best film of all time.  What makes it so special? Well, if that was so easy to say, then every movie ever made should be equally as good, right? I guess we just like the main characters, Andy (Tom Robbins) and Red (Morgan Freeman). We want good things for them, and when they are somehow able to defy all odds and have their happy ending, that feels awesome. The film also does a masterful job of showing that the happy ending was plausible. In both men's cases, they had to survive decades in prison, but as Red puts it, Andy was too pretty a bird to be caged. Red, too. He served 40 years for a horrible crime, but he was no longer the person who committed that crime. This is one of those movies that I remember pretty much from beginning to end. In a way, I would never need to watch it again, because I know it. But somehow I do return to it every 5 or 10 years, and every time I watch it, I'm left com...

Prequel, sequel, stand-alone?  I recently re-watched Prometheus (2012), but even so, I wasn't completely sure about the timeline for this one. I had to look it up, and then I learned that this one is supposed to be 10 years after Prometheus.  And yet, the colony ship didn't have a clue about the planet they decided to detour to on a lark? That seemed a little unbelievable. I get that ship in space don't get a daily newspaper, but I'm guessing they would have known about the last ship to visit, especially if no one from that ship made it off the planet.  In terms of the special effects in this one, I liked it. One of the aliens jumped scared the crap out of my wife, and the continuation of the synthetic humans storyline is cool.  Is it a little obvious about "David" at the end? Yeah, maybe, but he's a bad dude. It's neat that he had a need to create, and he didn't give a darn about humans. Why should he?  Do I feel a little "tricked" with ...

A first-love sort of Romeo and Juliet story. Bud and Wilma (Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood) are high school sweethearts. His family has come into oil money, but hers is still more working class (although her father has potential money in the stock market). As it stands, however, Bud's dad doesn't consider Wilma a match for his son... at least he doesn't want his son to marry early and kill his chances at going to college.  Women are definitely cast into two categories. Nice girls and whores. Bud's own sister is a "whore" type, which is weird, because Bud's dad wants his son to sow his wild oats with all the whores he can. At the same time, his dad warns him not to let a "nice girl" catch him, or not to "go too far" with a nice girl and then end up being required to do the responsible thing.  Bud is conflicted. He can see what has become of his sister. What any of that has to do with Wilma, I'm not sure. She's the pure girl, 100%...