The Writer's Poke

While we are confronted with a dead body and a possible manslaughter/murder/coverup, the quirkiness of the situation and how all of the characters respond to it make this film quite different from other Hitchcock films.  Is it a 5-star film on the level of other 5-star Hitchcock films? Man, that's a tough question. And I'm going to punt on that. I don't know if this film is as good as Vertigo or Psycho. Honestly, probably not, but regardless, I do find the character development, the acting, and the setting all top notch.  Who is Harry? He's a dead body. And the trouble is, the people involved can't seem to get rid of him. He's buried, unburied, and so on, "throughout the day." Although Harry isn't a local, and for a while seems to be a stranger that's just unfortunately been shot, we discover that he's not a stranger, and the cause of his death is more complicated.  At the end, I love when Jennifer (Shirley McLaine) explains to the doctor j...

So I'm not sure how much we're supposed to care or how much they think we're going to remember... but at the end of the first movie, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) dies, right? And didn't they mention and confirm her death in part 2? Well, apparently not. Even if she "went crazy" at the end of the original movie, she must have gotten better quickly, because she's back front and center in part 3, as a gifted psychology graduate student. She's so amazing that she even gets a full-blown adult male psychiatrist to fall in love with her. It's a budding relationship that's never really explained or developed. But anyway, this movie does lowkey rock. At the beginning of the film, Nancy (Patricia Arquette) cranks up Dokken's "Into the Fire" in an effort to stay awake, and so we're already Rokken with Dokken, and all is right with the world. Even before anything happens, you can already tell the production value is ten times better than it...

Unlike the first movie, which has the novelty of casting Johnny Depp, as well as having some interesting special effects, I gotta say that this movie has nothing really going for it.  A new family moves into the old house. Five years have passed, and we're told that Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) had killed herself. In the insulting twist ending to the first film, that's not how I remember it, but no matter. Franchises like this will change little details, either out of laziness, or because changing the details suits their purposes in some way. This time a boy, Jesse (Mark Patton) has the bad dreams. His dad knows about the house's history, but even though his son is going crazy, he never thinks that the house and his son's condition are connected. In the first film, Freddy (Robert Englund) stays on the dream side, more or less. But the idea is established that he can, somehow, cross into the side of the living. He seemingly crosses over a lot in this sequel, but really, wh...

The previous two times I watched this one, I gave it 4 stars, but this time, after just re-watching the other three Jimmy Stewart Hitchcock movies, I'm giving it 2.5 stars.  For whatever reason, it just didn't wow me this time. Stewart and Doris Day (Ben and Jo) are put in the horrible position of having their child kidnapped. But most of the movie is about us waiting for his release. The beginning of the film even tells us that the big moment is when the cymbal player claps the cymbals.  Now it takes a while for us to learn all the plot details, but I never feel like for a second that the boy will be killed or otherwise harmed, and since he's always more or less safe, there's not the needed sense of real danger. Maybe that's it.  But beyond that, there's nothing really compelling about Ben and Jo. They're a pretty bland married couple. They're happy, fight once a month, and Jo wants another child - seems a little odd, considering their son must be 10 or...

I love stop animation. In fact, it might be my favorite type of film, and as one reviewer noted, it's just about the biggest FU to AI there is.  LAIKA has an incredible track record. Wildwood is its sixth film. The first five all were Oscar nominated for Best Animated Feature. For Wildwood, I would love to see it nominated for Best Picture, period. It's that good. Only three animated films -- Beauty and the Beast (1991), Up (2009), and Toy Story 3 (2010) have been nominated for Best Picture, and they all lost.  Let me just mention the other five LAIKA films. Coraline is probably my favorite of the first five, but I think Wildwood blows them all away: Coraline (2009) ParaNorman (2012) The Boxtrolls (2014) Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) Missing Link (2019) What makes Wildwood even better than the previous five LAIKA films? It's even more epic. It perfectly captures both the cityscape of Portland, and the natural environment of the Impassible Woods. Although I've only spe...

This is the third or fourth time I've watched Vertigo, and although I'm going to keep the 5-star rating, man... can we talk about the ending? Scottie (Jimmy Stewart) needs to go back to the tower to "put the past behind him," and to prove to himself that he can make it to the top. That's fair, but as for the rest of the ending -- what happens at the top of the tower -- it just feels abrupt and leaves a lot of loose ends. Maybe we can assume that a few things will happen, but we never know for sure. Will Scottie finally put the past behind him and settle down with Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes)? I'm guessing she'll still take him, even if she knows she's his consolation prize. And what about Gavin (Tom Helmore)? Can we assume that Scottie will track him down and bring him to justice? But what "proof" does he have that Gavin did anything? The necklace? Not much more, really. But let's think a little bit more about the "behind the scenes...

Murder brings them together. Lisa (Grace Kelly) and L.B. (Jimmy Stewart) have nothing in common. He's a daredevil photographer, and he wants to keep travelling all over the world to take pictures. She is a glamour girl, happy to stay grounded in her social class and city lifestyle. One wonders how they even met and how they ever started dated. Then again, at the end of the movie, we see that Miss Torso has a boyfriend/husband who doesn't look like he should be with her, so strange things happen in relationships. When we first see Lisa enter L.B.'s apartment, Hitchcock gives her three shots from three different angles before she kisses L.B. And why not? At the time, Hitchcock (and us) might be mesmerized by her beauty, but all L.B. can think about is what's happening across the courtyard in the apartment complex. It's weird. No one but L.B. notices anything. All these people live next to, below, and on top of one another, and yet, none of them know each other, and th...

From what I read, Hitchcock thought Rope was a failure, with the plot being ultimately "thin" and the "one continuous shot" featured in the movie as too gimmicky. After a very short 1948 run in theaters, Rope was more or less forgotten until 1984, the first time it went on VHS. It wouldn't go on DVD until 2001.  The "one continuous shot" is actually a series of ten shots. The "invisible cuts" are made by the camera, for example, going "dark" into a man's jacket and then coming back out at the beginning of the next shot. It's a pretty cool technique that isn't overly noticeable until you start looking for it, which you might when you realize that each shot is going for minutes without a cut or break.  Obviously, the film has a sort of "play" feel, as the entire movie takes place in one room of the apartment. We may look into the kitchen or down a hall, but we don't ever actually leave the main living room. I...

This movie is iconic. This movie is pretty bad. Both things can be true. As I scroll through some of the other reviews on Letterboxd, I quickly come to the conclusion that no one is reviewing/rating the movie on its merits. They're rating it from nostalgia, or they're saying that it somehow changed the face of slasher movies. Well, I'm just going to assess it like any other movie. I've watched it a few times, and every time it's bad, just in different ways.  I don't think the special effects are bad. I like them. When Freddy (Robert Englund) licks Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) through the phone, I laugh at how corny is looks, but it's still a cool effect.  What I guess I don't like about the film is never being able to tell when Nancy is dreaming and when she's awake. At some point, I just assume she's always dreaming, and then, when there's supposed to be some "unforeseen" twist, I yawn, because I already assumed that something would ...

With Saboteur, I mentioned that a little sound might have helped. Shadow of a Doubt opens with a waltz, and that waltz is later hummed by different members of the family. So we get sound right from the start of this film, and then a soundtrack, too, that captures the emotions of the characters. The sound helps. I did start to wonder if the plot was too simplistic. We more or less know who's guilty. We don't know from the start of what, but he's guilty. What we don't know, I guess, is what Charlie (Teresa Wright) will do about it. She's weak. First agreeing to help the Detective (Macdonald Carey). Then agreeing to help Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton). (Her mom/Uncle Charlie's sister comes across as weak, too. The men in the film aren't weak... just quirky and not necessarily all that smart.) Meanwhile, I like the banter between Charlie's dad (Henry Travers) and the neighbor (Hume Cronyn). They're always discussing the best way to kill each other without...

When I watched this the first time in 2017, I ended up giving it a 2 out 5-star rating. I didn't write down any notes to explain my rationale, and so as I was re-watching the film now, I found myself trying to piece together how I might have rated it so poorly then. This time around, I appreciated the set pieces, especially the State of Liberty ending. But the film had other "set pieces," and by that, I simply mean, Hitchcock clearly took some time to figure out how to best shoot the factory, the cabin in the woods, the dockyard, the dance floor, and so on. Good camera work. Good set up of scenes. Good lighting. Just a lot of "good stuff" that a 2-star film wouldn't have.  Did the movie lack anything, then? Well, it's a quiet film. When I think of Hitchcock, I think of the dramatic score. Try watching Psycho without the soundtrack. It wouldn't be nearly the same, right? I just wonder what a good musical score would add to Saboteur.  That might, in fa...

What a pleasant surprise. Robert (Rock Hudson) has exactly what he wants. Lisa (Gina Lollobrigida) is his September girl. Every September, he leaves Rome for his villa in the country, and he spends the whole month with Lisa. When the month is up, he says goodbye and goes back to Rome.  He's happy with that arrangement. I guess we're to assume that he thinks she's happy with that arrangement, too. Does he have other girls in Rome, or other girls for different months? Not that we know of. In his own way, he might be "faithful" to Lisa. But do they ever talk the other eleven months of the year? The last time Robert left for Rome, Lisa ended up meeting another man. It's July, and she's set to marry this other guy, but as luck would have it, Robert decides to go to his villa a couple months early. But how had Lisa been seeing this other guy for seven months without Robert ever knowing? This is when he learns the servant that takes care of his villa has started ...

The premise of this one: Samuel (Charles Coburn) is getting older, and he regrets that the love of his life got away. Before he dies, he's interested in leaving his fortune to the family of that woman's children. But he first wants to vet them to make sure they're worthy of his money.  So he goes undercover as John Smith and manages to live with the family as a boarder. They seem like a nice enough bunch, but with two kids in college, a mortgage to pay, as well as drugstore business to run, they're broke. The $8 a week he's going to pay them as a boarder will go a long way...  Meanwhile, Samuel becomes closer to the family, and he decides to give them, anonymously, $100,000 -- just to see how they'll handle the money. Harriet (Lynn Bari), the mother, goes nuts. But everyone else in the family just goes along with it? They sell the drugstore, sell the house, buy a mansion, and somehow make $100,000 feel like a billion dollars... and everyone in town believes, rig...

This is the second DVD I found in a Litte Library, and I'm glad I did, because somehow -- how? -- it completely went under my radar. Think about all the great stars in this one -- John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, George Cloney, Frances McDormand -- how could this ensemble cast not make a banger of a film? Well, it is a banger. Yes, it's a comedy, but it works because everyone plays it straight. All of the characters are "quirky," but somehow, they are all playing it straight. Not once does the film go for a laugh. It's not like, say, The Big Lebowski or Fargo. I mean, those are also movies that more or less play it straight, too, but the places to laugh are more obvious, and the quirky characters in those films cross some sort of "quirky/laugh line." I have a feeling that some viewers think this movie is "second tier" Coen Brothers, because the laughs aren't as obvious. I actually don't hold that against it. No, I don't quite think it...

Last month I was doing a tour of Little Libraries -- I visited maybe 150 -- and this was one of two DVDs that I found. As a Cary Grant fan, I had actually never heard of this film, but I was curious to give it a watch Betsy Drake, as it turns out, is his co-star, and she was also his wife at the time -- his 3rd of 5. Drake doesn't seem to have had a very robust film career, and she didn't stay married long to Grant. There's nothing wrong with her, although it's difficult to say that she had any real star power.  That said, she was probably perfectly cast for this role -- the role of a mother with three kids of her own, but still someone caring enough to want to take on additional "problem children." it's a rather odd film, coming across almost as a propaganda film --promoting the idea that people should consider fostering/adopting older "problem" children. The Roses never actually adapt the two children that enter their family, but Anna (Drake) e...

This has to be the standard version by which all other versions of Sense and Sensibility are judged. All the main characters do such an amazing job. It's no surprise to me that Kate Winslet gives such an amazing performance as Marianne, but what about Hugh Grant as Edward? (I just love the way he stands and walks and hold his head as Edward.) Let's be honest: The men are all secondary characters, but everything depends on them, in a way, and all of them seem to be impotent. They want love and romance as much as the women, but they are also more beholden to the wishes of their family -- assuming their family has money and the power to cut off their inheritance.  That's not quite fair, because I'm sure rich women want love, too, but at least in this Austen adaptation if not the others, the focus is on the women from more modest means, and the roadblocks they face trying to secure the love of the men they want to marry, men who just happen to be "above the economic st...

While I'm sure some people might say they "like" this film, I find it hard to believe anyone could claim to "enjoy" watching it. I watched it in the theater when it was originally released, but I never had much interest in watching it again. Since I'm currently watching Mel Gibson films, I thought I'd go ahead and give it a re-watch, but I have to admit it was difficult to watch.  If you look at it cinematically, it's interesting. We have some color saturation. The Garden of Gethsemane scenes are in blue. Most of the "Jewish" scenes are drained of all color except for browns and other darker colors. The "Roman" scenes "pop," slightly, with red. And take a look at Jesus's (Jim Caviezel) left eye. Usually in films, it's the blue eyes that get oversaturated, but here we have a rare example of brown-eye over-saturation.  I did forget a few things from the original viewing: 1) Satan is with Christ in the Garden, but h...

"Freedom!" -- William Wallace's last word. Good movie? Great movie? Right now, I'm leaning more towards "good movie," but it did win Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture and three other categories, so that would indicate it should be a little bit better than just good.  Checking in on Ebert's original rating, he gave it 3.5/4 stars, and he never bumped it up to the "Great Movie" series.  What does the movie lack? Well, it's historically inaccurate in a lot of ways. That doesn't bother me. Mel Gibson is also way too old for the part of William Wallace. That doesn't bother me either.  At times the film comes across a little too melodramatic, a little too soap opera-y. Not over-the-top so, but enough so that it slightly bothers me.  I also don't like not being able to follow the timeline. What's being captured in this film happens over at least a 15–20-year time period (and that's starting from when Wallace comes back ...

Family. That's the final message the apparent ending of the franchise ends on. And I'm not going to poo-poo that message too much, because I've been wanting more focus on character development for the last two movies. At least in this movie, we get it to some degree -- as well as a little less reliance on stupid comedy. Riggs (Mel Gibson) starts remembering and mentioning his dead wife again, and both Lorna (Rene Russon) and Rog's (Danny Glover) are pregnant.  Six years have passed between film 3 and film 4; I'm guessing that means six years have passed in the timeline... have Riggs and Lorna really been together for six years and somehow not broached the subject of marriage? That seems implausible. Does Rog really not know that his daughter has been dating Lee (Chris Rock), a cop? Again, seems implausible.  The plot, however, is easier to follow. The Chinese villains are easy to villainize. Again, very one-dimensional villains, but at least I can follow who the cop...

"Let's live to regret this." Riggs (Mel Gibson) to Lorna (Rene Russo) That's not a great line, but it's what Riggs says when he's willing Lorna to hold on after the bad guy has almost fatally shot her. And it's about the only line in the movie that stood out even a little bit. Beyond that, if this film had a writer, he wasn't being paid for the dialogue.  In the first film, they immediately draw you in with a naked woman jumping to her death. In the second film, they start with a high-speed chase. In this film, we get a song playing to pretty fire behind the opening credits. Maybe the opening is foreshadowing, as the Riggs will make sure that the bad guys burns in the end, but I thought it was definitely the weakest of the three openings.  But really, after the bomb scare sequence, I checked out. Riggs wants to go in to disable the bomb, even though he has no training in that. He's willing to risk his life -- again, if he's no longer suicidal, ...