Gideon58's Reviews

NANCY GOES TO RIO
Jane Powell and her breathtaking lyric soprano take center stage for a delightful MGM confection from 1950 called Nancy Goes to Rio. This film was produced by the Joe Pasternak division of MGM. Pasternak was a producer who preferred legit sopranos like Jane Powell and Deanna Durbin as the stars of his movies as opposed to belters like Judy Garland and this movie appears to be a real valentine to Powell from Pasternak as no expense was spared here.

Powell plays Nancy Barclay, the daughter of Broadway star Frances Elliott (Ann Southern), who is just as talented as her mother and has been toiling quietly in her college summer stock productions keeping boyfriend Scotty (Scotty Beckett) at arm's length, looking for her big break wherever it might come. Nancy gets her break when the author of a new musical (Fortunio Bononova) sees Nancy in a college production and offers her the lead in his new musical, a role that he had promised to Nancy's mother, even though the character in the new show is much closer to Nancy's age.

Nancy is sent to Brazil on a cruise ship to learn the role secretly and while on the ship meets a handsome playboy (Barry Sullivan) who overhears Nancy rehearsing lines from the play which he, of course, misinterprets leading to some classic musical comedy complications that find Nancy and her mother not only competing for the same role, but for the same man.

The MGM gloss makes this piece of fluff appear a lot more important than it really is and if you look at the basic plot, in this day it would be laughed off the screen because in 2016 a mother and daughter competing for the same part or the same man would not be nearly as considerate of each other's feelings as Frances and Nancy are in this movie, which is what makes this movie such a wonderful escape, and wasn't that what MGM musicals were all about?

Powell and Southern are wonderful together and their voices blend beautifully on "Magic is the Moonlight". Other musical highlights include "So This is Love", "Ca-Room Pa-Pa", "Shine on Harvest Moon", "Yipsee Ky-Ay", "Time and Time Again" and the title tune. Powell even offers a stunning rendition of "Musetta's Waltz" from LaBoheme.

Carmen Miranda, in her second to last film, shines in her two musical numbers that disguise how pointless her role really is and Louis Calhern is a lot of fun as Nancy's grandfather. Only Sullivan misses the boat here, light comedy not really being his thing and failing to produce chemistry with either of the leading ladies, but it's a bit of a nitpick in a colorful and entertaining MGM musical package that is a pretty smooth ride.

I've never heard of Nancy Goes to Rio, but it sounds like my type of movie, so I added it to my watchlist.

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GRACE OF MONACO

Grace Kelly had only made 11 movies and won an Academy Award when, a couple of years later, she walked away from Hollywood after a whirlwind and highly-publicized romance with Prince Rainer and actually became Her Serene Royal Highness Princess Grace of Monaco, a move that shocked Americans and Europeans alike and the early years following these events are documented in 2014's Grace of Monaco, a 2014 docudrama that begins with the disclaimer that it is a "fictional account of actual events", an up close look at how what looked like a fairy tale to the rest of the world was anything but.

The film opens during the final day of filming on what appears to be To Catch a Thief and then the film skips to 1961 where see Alfred Hitchcock arriving at the Monaco compound because he wants Grace to return to Hollywood in order to star in his latest film "Marnie" and it is this one event that sets off one of the most complex and ugly political machinations of a woman's private life and her very public marriage.

What this film does so effectively is that it gives us a very insightful look inside Grace and her restlessness as the new Princess...even before Hitchcock tells her, it is clear from Grace's first appearance in this movie that this woman is not happy. I'm not saying that this is what was going on, I am saying this is how director Olivier Dahan and screenwriter Arash Amel present Grace...I always thought it was very odd that Grace walked away from Hollywood at the height of her career and this film initially implies that Grace might have regretted what she has done but feels a little trapped in her new princess clothes. Needless to say, it was no surprise that Grace was initially very excited at the prospect of returning to Hollywood but neither the Prince nor the rest of Monaco was having that. It was clear from the moment Rainer learned of Hitchcock's visit, that there was no way Grace was going to do this movie (# 2 Hitchcock obsession Tippi Hedren ended up doing the movie).

As I watched I couldn't help but compare the marriage of Grace and Rainer to the marriage of Marilyn Monroe and Joe Dimaggio...two men who became obsessed with movie stars but found they really didn't want movie stars at home and were a little frustrated with the fact that the women were unable to let go of Hollywood the second they left and this became very clear here with Grace where her doing this movie actually turned out to have political repercussions and the lengths that palace staff went to in order to keep Grace from doing this movie were a little chilling and though I found Grace's involvement in all the Monaco politics a little hard to swallow, it made her decision to eventually turn down Marnie understandable.

The screenplay is a little muddled, but it doesn't get in the way of the golden performance by Nicole Kidman in the title role...a perfect marriage of actress and character whose performance alone made this film appointment viewing and made the film seem a lot better than it really is. Tim Roth's quiet dignity as Rainer, Frank Langella's fatherly confidente to Grace, and Parker Posey, seriously cast against type as a palace staffer with questionable loyalties also made an impression but they were all just window dressing to what is Nicole Kidman's movie and she owns it. One small technical quibble: When Grace is outfitted for that first ball scene in the white gown with the sash, the camera does a close up on her feet revealing that she's wearing flats...the Princess would not be wearing flats on such an occassion. I know Kidman is tall and they probably didn't want her towering over the rest of the cast, so don't do a close-up of the flats (duh!).

Gideon, have you seen the bio pic movie about Princess Diana... called Diana (2013)?

No, I haven't...isn't that the one where Naomi Watts plays Diana?

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA
The star and director of Escape from New York reunited five years later for a little cinematic acid trip called Big Trouble in Little China, another entry from the "Just Put your Brain in Check and Enjoy" school of filmmaking.

Kurt Russell plays a truck driver named Jack Burton who hooks up with an old friend named Wang in San Francisco's Chinatown and agrees to give Wang a ride to the airport in order to pick up his fiancee, Miao Yin. Upon arrival, Miao Yin and another girl are kidnapped by a Chinese street gang. Gracie (Kim Cattrall) is a lawyer who was there to protect the girl and obviously failed. Before you can say red herring, it is revealed that Miao Yin has been kidnapped for a 2000 year old sorcerer named David Lo Pan, who has been cursed to exist without his body and the only way to lift the curse is to marry a woman with green eyes, which Miao Yin happens to possess, a rarity for an Asian girl, but things get stickier when Lo Pan finds out Gracie has green eyes too and decides to marry both of them.

If this film sounds crazy and outrageous, crazy and outrageous doesn't even scratch the surface of what goes on here...there are gravity-defying street gang members, goblins and creatures that are impossible to identify, century old Gods who walk underground Chinatown with electricity coursing through their veins, and a villain who morphs into at least three different forms during the course of the story,

And just when you're exhausted from trying to keep up with everything that's going on, the breezy laid back Jack Burton moves center stage to remind us that he thinks what we're watching is just as ridiculous as we do. Jack is one of those great reluctant heroes who really had nothing to do with what is going on here, having walked in on the whole thing accidentally, but once he's in the middle of it, he steps up and becomes that awesome kind of anti-hero that would make Indiana Jones and John McClane proud.

Director John Carpenter mounts some elaborate action scenes and serves Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein's screenplay with the tongue-in-cheek quality it demands. He also gets a breezy and sexy performance from Russell as Jack Burton. I also loved Dennis Dun as Wang and James Hong chewing up the scenery as Lo Pan. It's not Shakespeare, or even Tarantino, but it's a lot of fun.

That's the one.

GHOSTBUSTERS (2016)

The 1984 comedy ranked #5 on my list of favorite film comedies and there is a plethora of reasons why I was not interested in watching the remake nor why I could even get behind the idea of making it at all, primarily the idea of resurrecting the film without the late Harold Ramis just seemed wrong to me, but I didn't know that this remake was being done with a female cast which made me a little more comfortable about watching it, but it still wasn't a great idea and was a remake that I could have gone through my life without knowing about, despite little signs throughout that people involved in the original were giving this reboot their blessing.

Director and co-screenwriter Paul Feig and his muse, Melissa McCarthy seem to be the culprits here, deciding to remake something that really wasn't screaming remake, but when has that stopped Hollywood before? The film is not a scene-for-scene remake like Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho, but it follows the same basic story outline and tweaks some of the characters and their relationships in order to give the piece an air of originality and possibly fool the one or two people on the planet who never saw the 1984 original.

In this film, Erin (Kristen Wiig) is about to begin a new teaching job at Columbia when a book about the paranormal she wrote 20 years ago with Abby (McCarthy) has appeared online and is putting Erin's job at risk. She tracks down Abby who is still chasing ghosts with the silly yet intense Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) and refuses to take the book off the internet. Of course, Erin gets fired from Columbia and before you can say, "Who ya gonna call?", we have a 2016 distaff version of the Ghostbusters.

Feig and Kate Dippold have constructed a screenplay that sticks pretty close to Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis' original concept, tweaking it for the New Millenium...changing the sex of the lead characters required some major re-thinking of a lot of the story, especially the part about Peter Venkman and Dana Barrett, which basically had to be scrapped here; unfortunately, the villain they came up with to replace that story wasn't nearly as interesting. I did love Erin hating their work being referred to as ghostbusting.

Feig and McCarthy were once again afforded a seemingly unlimited budget like they were for Spy and every penny spent is up there on the screen, creating their own vision for this well-loved story while paying homage to the film from which it came, evidenced in lifting of original set pieces from 1984 as well as cameo appearances from four cast members of the original film. Feig keeps control of this epic project and gets performances from his cast that serve the story, but if the truth be told, Kate McKinnon quietly walks off with this movie as the goofy Holtzmann, which really wasn't that hard to do. Hardcore fans of the original film, you stand warned...

THE HATEFUL EIGHT

Quentin Tarentino's unique storytelling technique, his eye for cinematic carnage and some thundering performances are the primary selling points of 2015's The Hateful Eight, a bloody western saga that provides riveting entertainment that requires some patience, but patience will be rewarded.

It's the dead of winter in Wyoming shortly after the Civil War where we meet Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a bounty hunter bound for the city of Red Rock who hitches a ride on a stagecoach which was bought by another bounty hunter named John Ruth (Kurt Russell) who's handcuffed to his bounty, a murderer named Daisy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) he likes to elbow in the mouth whenever she speaks. The stagecoach then picks up Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who reveals himself to be the next sheriff of Red Rock. As weather becomes intolerable, the stage does find shelter in what appears to be a large mountain cabin, populated with a group of disparate characters who we learn are all hiding secrets that are part of a much larger agenda.

As has been accustomed with Tarantino, our story is told out of sequence, but unlike Pulp Fiction, it takes a lot longer to figure that out, primarily due to several red herrings, another Tarantino trademark, particularly Warren's possession of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln, that almost makes the viewer stray from the prize, which is the real story that eventually unfolds. But a pot of poisoned coffee at the beginning of the third act kicks this story into high gear and after that, Tarantino brings the bloody and delivers the story we've been waiting for.

Tarantino's screenplay is a little talky, which includes an unbelievably limitless use of the "N" word...I can't remember the last time I've heard this word used so much in a single film and Tarantino's possible racist leanings could find some justification in the fact that he also makes Jackson's Marquis Warren the smartest character in the story, but racist is in the eye of the beholder.

Tarantino continues to be a great actor's director and gets superb performances from his rep company including Jackson, as always, Russell, Leigh (one of the most durable female characters that I've ever seen), Tim Roth, and especially Walton Goggins, who lights up the screen as Chris Mannix. I would like to submit Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, and Bruce Dern for permanent membership in the Tarantino rep company.

It should be mentioned that this film features some of the most gorgeous cinematography I have ever seen...not since The Shining has a winter landscape served a story so effectively, and Ennio Morricone's music score is properly evocative. It takes a minute to get going, but once it does, this one delivers.

GRAND CANYON

The creative force behind 1983's The Big Chill scored a not as well known bullseye eight years later with Grand Canyon, a 1991 episodic drama centered on a group of characters whose six degrees of separation tell different stories of guilt, loneliness, materialism, emotional blackmail, and the consequences of actions.

The film centers on the accidental meeting between two people who really never should have: Mack (Kevin Kline) is a high-powered Los Angeles attorney whose car breaks down in the wrong neighborhood one night and his life is actually saved by a tow truck driver named Simon (Danny Glover) and then we are introduced to the lives that surround both of these two men whose separate lives involve some life-altering events.

On Mack's side, we meet his wife, Claire (Mary McDonnell), who is experiencing empty nest syndrome when her 15 year old son goes to camp for the summer and one morning while jogging, Claire actually finds an abandoned baby in a secluded wooded area and decides that she is going to keep this baby, no matter what her husband and son think. We also meet Dee (Mary Louise Parker), Mack's assistant with whom he had a one night stand that he regrets but it is slowly revealed that Dee has not gotten over it as quickly as Mack has. Then there's Mack's BFF, Davis (Steve Martin), a movie producer who is responsible for popular cinematic trash who has an alleged epiphany after a mugging that ends with him getting shot in the leg.

Simon's world introduces his nephew (Patrick Malone) whose gang banging has put his mother (Tina Lifford) and little sister in serious danger. What we then see is Mack feeling obligated to continually thank Simon for what he did while discouraging his wife about this baby and pretty much ignoring what Dee is going through.

Director Lawrence Kasdan and his wife, Meg have crafted an intelligent, if slightly talky screenplay that offers some surprising moments of discomfort, especially in the way Mack keeps trying to insert himself into Simon's life but we understand Mack's gratitude as well as we understand Simon's discomfort at Mack possibly making more out of this incident than he should have, though as I watched the opening scene, I couldn't help but think that if the same incident happened in 2016, both Mack and Simon would have been dead.

Kasdan's direction is thoughtful and detailed as it was in The Big Chill and gets some terrific performances from his cast, with standout work from Glover, maybe my favorite performance of his and Steve Martin's flashy, Oscar-worthy turn as Davis. BTW, Mack's son is played by a young Jeremy Sisto, who, four years later, would get his 15 minutes playing Elton in Clueless...love the scene where Mack is giving his son a driving lesson. What we have here is a thoughtful and intelligent adult drama with a brilliant ensemble cast that will suck you in and keep you invested to the end.

I hate the way they promote this film.

It looks like it's called Ghostbusters: Answer the Call.

Grand Canyon has been on my watchlist for a while, mainly because of Kevin Kline, but I haven't gotten around to watching it because Steve Martin movies are very hit or miss for me. But your review makes it sound like something I would probably like, so I'm bumping it up on my watchlist a bit.

BTW, I'm not sure about Jeremy Sisto's movie career, but he's had more than his "15 minutes" on TV. He starred in the short-lived TV show "Kidnapped", and he was in a few seasons of "Law & Order", (as well as several other TV shows that I didn't watch).

You would love this movie, GBG, and please don't let Steve Martin's presence deter you...he plays a character unlike anything he' done and he's brilliant, I could have seen him getting an Oscar nomination. As for Jeremy Sisto, yes, he has worked past Clueless, including the star of the sitcom Suburgatory, but no one really knows who he is, except if you say, "Remember the guy who played Elton in CLUELESS?"

I've never seen Clueless, but I'll probably always think of Jeremy Sisto as the guy from the short-lived show "Kidnapped".

WILD

A pair of Oscar-nominated performances make 2014's Wild worth investigating. This is the fact-based story of a woman who finds an unusual outlet for dealing with all the rotten cards she's been dealt. Unfortunately, the rotten cards turn out to be a lot more interesting than the outlet.

This moody, episodic drama is about a woman named Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) who, distraught over the end of her marriage, and the death of her mother (Laura Dern) impulsively makes the decision to hike over a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, a journey of self-discovery and renewal that, despite her lack of experience, does transform the Cheryl we meet at the beginning of the movie. Actually, our first glance of Cheryl is about halfway through her journey where her hiking boots have just fallen off the edge of a very steep cliff.

This movie does introduce the viewer to what is new and foreign cinematic territory. The world of hikers is apparently a counter culture all its own, kind of like bikers. The trail offers assistance along the way that Cheryl knew little about. An early scene of her trying to get her over-packed backpack on was kind of comical, It was fun when she learned that the company where she bought her boots will automatically replace them free of charge when they wear out. An encounter with a writer for a "hobo" newsletter who was so impressed with meeting that rarest of animals, a female hobo, was also amusing.

Unfortunately, the story of Cheryl's journey wasn't nearly as interesting as the backstory that motivates it...her crumbling marriage, the beautiful evolution of her relationship with her mother who rose above an abusive marriage that she shielded her children from before succumbing to cancer and Cheryl's bouts with drug abuse and promiscuity were a lot more interesting than Cheryl's hike, taking the focus of this film away from where it was intended.

The long winded screenplay by Nick Hornsby adapted from Cheryl's book is hard to stay with at times but director Jean-Marc Vallee's respect for the subject comes through in every overly detailed frame. Witherspoon is wonderful in this physically demanding role as is Dern, who lights up the screen as her mother and as expected with a film like this, there is some exquisite location photography, unfortunately, the wrong story came into focus for me making the film pretty hard going, but still worthwhile.

You might have read my post where I talked about this movie...but I have hiked on a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail, but not the entire length!

I'm pretty sure it was your review that motivated me to add the film to my watchlist, but don't remember you talking about the trail.

GRACE IS GONE

A director/screenwriter I have never heard of named James C. Strouse struck gold with a 2007 drama called Grace is Gone, a different and compelling look at loss and grief and coping mechanisms for same that works due to Strouse's sensitive direction and a startling lead performance from John Cusack.

Cusack plays Stanley Phillips, a home supply store manager whose wife is an army sergeant who has been deployed to Iraq while he is keeping the home fires burning with his daughters, Heidi and Dawn. Grace has been away for awhile and the family is quietly adjusting...Stanley even tries attending a support group for military wives on the base where he lives. One morning, Stanley gets up and answers the door and finds two very official looking military officers at his door who inform him that Grace has been killed in Iraq. While reeling from the shock and clueless as to how to tell his daughters, Stanley realizes that he can't do it and instead packs his daughters in the car and announces they're driving to Florida and going to Disney World (renamed Enchanted Gardens for this movie).

This is another one of those manipulative dramas that had my stomach in knots for the majority of the running time. We feel Stanley's pain but we also know, at our movie viewing core, that what he is doing is wrong, but we also know that he is doing it for the right reasons. This is a fantastic father who wants to protect his daughters from anymore pain. It seems that he has gotten them to an understanding about what their mother does and why she has to spend so much time away from them and though it is hinted that there is danger in what Grace does, it seems that Stanley never doubted Grace's return and the thought of having this conversation with his girls is more than he can bare. The film seems to become a race to see which will happen first...will Stanley be truthful with his daughters or will they find out accidentally. The moments where Stanley calls home so he can hear Grace's voice on the answering machine are just heartbreaking.

This delicate drama had me riveted to the screen as there are several moments in the story where I suspect elder daughter Heidi knows the truth but chooses to wait until her father wants to talk about it. There is one absolutely brilliant scene at the hotel where Heidi calls her school to let them know they're going to be gone for awhile and the tone of voice and what is being said on the other end of the phone conversation makes it clear that the school knows about Grace's death and I was literally holding my breath to see if Heidi would figure it out or if the school administrator would say the wrong thing and give it away.

Strouse has mounted a timely and straightforward story that he keeps center stage with everyone involved committing to this powerful but simple story. John Cusack buries his accustomed smart-ass screen persona and delivers a gut-wrenching performance as the father dealing with an impossible situation the only way he knows how. There is a wonderful supporting performance from Allesandro Nivola, most famous for playing Pollux Troy in Face/Off, as Stanley's ne'er do well brother and Shelan O'Keefe is glorious as Heidi. A simplistic drama of great power that should definitely tug at the heartstrings.

I've been a fan of John Cusack since his teen movies, but Grace is Gone shows a whole new side of him. He's terrific in this movie. It's heartbreaking watching him try to cope with the news of his wife's death, while at the same time trying to figure out how to break the news to his kids.

After the older daughter called the school, I was sure that she knew, or at least suspected, that her mother was dead, but when I saw her reaction at the end, I wasn't so sure. Maybe she only knew that something bad had happened to her mother, or maybe it was the shock of actually hearing the news out loud, but she seemed devastated when she heard the news.

Great review of a great movie.

I thought she knew after that phone call too...that phone call scene was BRILLIANT, the voice on the other end of the line played it perfectly. I thought Heidi knew but was either in denial about it or she wanted to hear it from her father. But it was clear when she finally got the news that she didn't know, though it's a little hard to believe that she didn't suspect it.