The Writer's Poke

This one is included with on the Camille (1936) DVD, and its runtime is just over an hour. Nicely preserved. I had no idea what I was going to get here. Nazimova -- did she just go by her last name? -- plays the role of Margueritte. What stands out about her in this performance is her wildly bushy hair, as well as the way she kind of slinks around a room. Based on the Alexander Dumas novel, we already know what the plot is -- especially if we've just watched the Garbo film version on the same DVD. Overall, I like the concision of this version. The black and white looks sharp. Those interested in Nazimova might find her Wikipedia entry instructive. In it, we learn that she's a Russian-born American actress. She appeared in 20 films, and her sexuality was apparently open. Born in 1879, she is about 42 when she portrays Margueritte, about 11 years older than Garbo was, and more appropriate to the age that I imagined Marguerite to be. I noted that a few Letterboxd reviewers wanted...

Some reviews on Letterboxd are essentially: I love Garbo. That's fine, but your appreciation for an actor doesn't equate to a 5-star review. I like a lot of actors, and most of them have been in movies of varying quality. When posting a review, even if it's just a sentence, my view is: it would be helpful to focus on the quality of the movie and not simply give a rating to an actor's appearance in said movie. All that said, I would agree that Garbo is an icon. She takes on roles that most actresses couldn't, and I like that as an actress, she's usually the center of the film, and not a throw-away after thought. In this film, Garbo plays Marguerite -- a kept woman, a courtesan. A quick Google search explains that a courtesan is not a prostitute but is a woman who basically "sells her favors" to a rich man so that she can live in the manner of a rich person. Favors include sex. As long as she's content living that lifestyle, no problem, but she reco...

This is one of those crime dramas that has the weird feeling of U.S government propaganda. I say that just because, at the beginning of the film, Senator George Smathers (Florida, 1951-1969) sits behind his desk and gives a brief pep talk about how the Government is working hard to stamp out crime. I mean, that's fine and everything, but I've seen other films where a government official says a few words at the beginning of a film, and that just seems odd to me. Like crossing the line between church and state -- in this case, Hollywood and state. Just don't. The narrator, too, has the sound of an old-school documentary film narrator. This is a film. Not a documentary. Not a government-produced film. But those would be minor concerns if I connected more to actual content of the film, but I don't. Basically, the good business leaders of Miami want to take action, and they heavy-handedly force an ex-Chicago gangster (now father and overall good guy -- yes, he was a Chicago ...

  Marta Toren died at 30 in early 1957, and finding the films on DVD that she was able to make before her untimely death isn't the easiest task. But after watching her and Bogart in Sirocco (1951), I realized I had left this DVD sitting unwatched for four years. I guess I left it unwatched because it's a newspaper cold war drama, with no stars who stood out to me... But since I now know Toren, I was anxious to give this a watch.  Overall, pleasant surprise. Jimmy Race (Dana Andrews) falls for Jeanne (Toren), and one wonders if a romance will ensue. She seems a little unsure about that, and meanwhile, he needs to go to go to Hungary to follow a story. Unfortunately, he sends back information, gets arrested, suffers torture, and is sentenced to death.  A swap takes place, and Jimmy returns to France. But he's not the same man. He comes back a shell, and we are left wondering if he will be able to recover. That, to me, is the "weird ending" element, because we're...

Some movies automatically click, and others don't. Why? Deanna Durbin, now pretty much a forgotten actress in 2026, except for hardcore movie buffs, was the top paid actress in 1945. Her salary per movie at that point was in the $400,000 range. That still seems like a lot of money today, but keep in mind that in today's dollars, she was making $8 million per movie. Unfortunately for me, this movie doesn't ever click. I want it to, but it doesn't. What I really like about the film is the lighting. This movie has perfect black & white noir lighting. Just perfect. It's fun to see Durbin hit her mark and just watch as her face enters that perfectly prepared lighting. But after the introduction of the original problem -- she sees a murder happen as she's reading a murder mystery and then chances to glance out her train window at just the right moment -- I don't find myself connecting much to the story being told. Maybe it's a problem of splattered genres....

This is the 4th movie version of Jane Eyre that I've watched this month. Zeffirelli does what most of the other screenwriters adapting this novel tend to do... skip quickly through the early chapters, get to the meat of the story, and then at the end, end quickly.  I don't mind that the film skips most of Jane Eyre's childhood. Perhaps Charlotte Bronte should have skipped that part as well. Maybe she should have started the novel with Jane entering Rochester's life as governance.  The romance. That's what people are paying to see.  William Hurt. I liked his performance as Rochester. Some reviewers suggested that he and Charlotte Gainsbourg didn't have any chemistry. I disagree. First, Rochester and Jane Eyre: Are they really supposed to have oodles of "real chemistry"? They from different social classes, and let's face it, they really have nothing in common. But when she saves him from the first fire, and he professes his debt to her, the camera cl...

How do Monsters learn how to be Monsters? They go to college, of course. In Monsters Inc. (2001), I think we just assume that Monsters intuitively know how to be scary, or they have internships and on-the-job training through simulator training sessions, and so on. The prequel, however, develops the idea that Monsters receive more formal academic training. In fact, going to school to learn how to scare is a very prestigious field -- maybe like going to school to become a lawyer or doctor -- and not everyone that begins the program will finish.  Both Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sully (John Goodman) fail the program. Mike is book smart, but he's never going to be scary. Sully is naturally scary, but he's not book smart. They apparently meet as freshman, and I point this out solely for the continuity error (in Monsters Inc., Mike mentions that Sully has been jealous of him since 4th grade).  When Mike and Sully are dropped from the program, they have one chance at redemption: They, ...

What produces more power? Screams or laughter? It's an odd question, but the answer is laughter, and it changes the way that the Monsters in this universe operate. No longer do they work to scare human children; rather, the less scary monsters work to entertain them and make them laugh.  At the beginning of the film, for example, we see monsters working in pairs. Sully (John Goodman) scares, and Mike (Billy Crystal) takes care of the canisters, orders the doors, and write up the reports. Once laughter replaces screams as the Monsters' renewable resource, one assumes that the jobs Mike and Sully perform are reversed. But is Sully very good at paperwork? (Not that Mike was the best, but...) I like this film. It's funny that at the beginning the Monsters are just as scared of human children (and maybe more so) as the children are of them. Monsters have the belief that children are "toxic" and deadly. In fact, entire contamination crews exist just in the event that a ...

How could a Bogart/Hurston/Capote/Lorre movie not be an immediate winner?  I'm sure I've seen this one before (I checked, and I did about 10 years ago), but like a lot of movies I've previously watched, if I wasn't writing a review and trying to remember what I thought, I completely forgot almost everything about any previous viewing.  My copy of the film is not restored -- although on the cover it claims to be. That's the first thing I noticed. I put the DVD in, and it just immediately starts to play the movie. I take a quick look at the reviews for the film, and I see that quite a few people comment that it was "made on the fly" without a real script, and that Hurston made it just to have an excuse to drink and smoke with Bogart. All of that seems rather dismissive, and the non-restored quality reinforces the idea that no one on the film side thinks it's a classic worth the effort to maintain.  Then some of Bogart's early lines. He does seem to b...

  Too simple? Jonathan Jr. (Robert Cummings) is set to marry, but his father is dying and wants to meet his son's fiancée. He can't find her, assumes his father will be dead by morning, and substitutes the hatcheck girl, Anne (Deanna Durbin).  For whatever reason, Jonathan Sr. (Charles Laughton) doesn't die. Maybe Anne revitalizes him. But anyway, you know from the beginning that Jr. and Anne will end up together. His fiancée is never depicted as a bad woman, and if they were engaged to be married, you assume she and Jr. loved each other. I guess the only "bad" thing about her was that she's attached to her mother, which would, I grant, make the honeymoon awkward.  Laughton is fun as the old man, but this is a romantic comedy with little real comedy. If you wanted to push the limits of the plot, why not have Sr. fall in love with Anne? She does teach him to dance, after all, but the movie never goes there. All we're left with is the idea that maybe Sr. dec...

The world might have been at War in 1944, but Hollywood was still cranking out the movies, including this singing Romantic Comedy.  This month I've been going through Deanna Durbin films. Most can be classified as "cookie cutter" and "light entertainment," which is not to say they're not somewhat enjoyable to watch... but this film had me smiling almost all of the way through. Great comedy, great use of technicolor -- maybe the best technicolor film I've ever seen, or at least the best one I've seen in quite some time.  Basic plot: Caroline (Deanna Durbin) is a senator's daughter -- so, rich and privileged. She's in love with a military man, Lt. Robert Latham (Robert Latham), but he's just a social climber, previously in love with the daughter of another senator, until that senator lost reelection.  Actually, I think that's a little harsh. Latham might actually love her, too, but that Caroline is a sitting senator's daughter is ju...