Writer/director Neill Blomkamp (District 9) serves up a blunt class struggle allegory set in a future where the filthy rich live on Elysium, a nice orbiting space station, while the rest of us live on the wastelands of planet Earth. Matt Damon stars as the working-class hero who risks it all to break into the floating utopia where he can cure himself and a friend’s child of their fatal illnesses and facilitate a coup. His mission threatens Elysium’s security czar, played by an icy cold Jodie Foster, who is plotting a coup of her own. She summons a crazed secret agent (Sharlto Copley) to stop Damon before her plans are foiled.
Hollywood’s most celebrated melodrama is still entertaining today. Vivien Leigh does a remarkable job playing one of the most volatile heroines in film history. Scarlet O’Hara begins Margaret Mitchell’s story damned spoiled, and I’m not sure she ever really learns her lesson, but Leigh renders a subtle transformation while always remaining true to character. My other favorites are Olivia de Havilland (sweet in everything she’s in), Hattie McDaniel (who deserved her Oscar), and Butterfly McQueen (for bringing a little comedy to the proceedings). I don’t get Leslie Howard as Ashley. For being the crux of the movie’s romantic triangle, I’d like to have known what was so darned special about him. Max Steiner’s music, especially the Tara theme, is among the most memorable ever composed for film.
The Conjuring, written by twin brothers Chad and Carey Hayes and directed by James Wan (Dead Silence, Saw), is an old-fashioned haunted house story that morphs into one of demonic possession. After some clunky exposition, the first half of the film is a solid tension-filled spook fest. Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston play parents of four young girls who unwittingly move their family into an old house where some pretty serious shit went down. With the help of husband and wife paranormal investigators (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) and the superfluous involvement of several horror tropes (a nasty doll, a witch, a music box, etc.), you start to figure out what’s going on and who’s behind it all. Unfortunately, the more you learn, the less interesting the movie gets. By the time Lili Taylor steps into pea soup-spewing territory, the movie’s stock starts to plummet.
Julie Andrews stars in this 1920s madcap musical as the title character, a woman looking to land a job and a husband in the big city, but ends up embroiled with a nefarious white slave trader! Mary Tyler Moore is underutilized as the woman Millie has to rescue from slavery, but Carol Channing chews the scenery in a bizarre Oscar-nominated performance only she could have pulled off. The musical numbers are a little unrelated to the storyline and they do go on a bit long, but there aren’t many numbers in the movie, and I believe they’re all over before the intermission. After the intermission, things move very quickly. Director George Roy Hill (The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) stretches out of his comfort zone so well, the last half-hour will have you wondering if Blake Edwards took over the film. It’s an intentionally silly, over-the-top sort of movie that pays off better than most of its sort.
This is the first of at least three film versions of Robert L. Sherwood’s play about an American soldier who falls in love with a Londoner during a World War I air raid, unaware that she is a prostitute. Director James Whale (Frankenstein, The Invisible Man) delivers a solid melodrama with two great lead performers. I was particularly taken with Kent Douglass as Roy. At times, he seemed to display the kind of naturalistic acting style that wouldn’t become popularized until Brando hit the scene decades later. I totally bought Roy’s doe-eyed infatuation with Myra (Mae Clarke), hook, line and sinker. Clark is good with the tremendous amount of pathos the screenplay gives her to work with.
I knew I would eventually have to watch this 3-hour 20-minute behemoth and thank goodness it’s over. Doctor Zhivago is a sprawling epic about the Russian Revolution as seen through the eyes of a doctor (Omar Sharif) who wants to have his cake (his wife is played by Geraldine Chaplin) and eat it, too (his mistress is played by Julie Christie). The first half is dense with plotting and myriad characters — I was getting pretty sleepy. But once Zhivago becomes an exile, I became more alert and the movie picked up speed. Still, when it was all over, I was underwhelmed. He loved two women, he inspired a nation, and I just didn’t care.
