goodmam Reviews

A Christmas Carol (1951)

Unequaled

[10/10 · 25 December 2008]

Can such a well-known story really contain a spoiler? I've marked this so just in case.

I've seen every film version of "A Christmas Carol" and this one is unsurpassed. There is no better Scrooge than Alistair Sim, especially after the character is transformed by his ghostly visitors. The cast surrounding Sim is likewise excellent; I especially love Kathleen Harrison who is hilarious as Mrs. Dilber, Scrooge's housekeeper. The film taps into the genuine sentimentality of the story without the treacle that overtakes some other versions.

It is really sad that it has been impossible to find a seasonal broadcast of this one in recent years.

The Wrong Box (1966)

side-splitting

[10/10 · 28 January 2007]

Simply one of the funniest movies ever made and, sadly, hardly known to American audiences. A brilliant cast of British actors executes a superbly convoluted farce, so funny it is hard to catch one's breath from laughing. Every actor creates a memorable comic portrait: shy, naive, Michael Caine, confused Peter Sellers, vengeful rivals Ralph Richardson and John Mills (my favorites), greedy Peter Cooke and randy Dudley Moore and many, many more. Wonderful screenplay, design, directing. Too many "best" moments to list. (I certainly never thought I'd see a movie chase involving horse-drawn Victorian hearses!) Give it a try.

Murder on the Orient Express (2001 TV Movie)

A remake with no reason to exist

[3/10 · 23 December 2006]

This so thoroughly pales in comparison to the stylish 1974 outing that it is hard to see any purpose in doing it. Moving it to a contemporary setting not only deletes the glamor and style, it means that modern methods of criminal investigation make Poirot-style detection obsolete, and modern methods of travel make Orient Express- style travel a sentimental curiosity rather than the fastest way to go.

The real question is why movie people so often remake films that were excellent in their original. If you can't improve on the earlier film, why do it? Maybe the effort to remake old movies would be better concentrated on originals that weren't very good in the first place. There are plenty of those to go around.

This Is the Army (1943)

Yes, there is a Yaphank

[8/10 · 2 July 2006]

As a twenty-year resident of Yaphank, New York, which is on Long Island about 60 miles east of Manhattan, I've learned some of the background of this movie.

Irving Berlin wrote "Yip, Yip, Yaphank" while stationed at Camp Upton in Yaphank during WW I. (Camp Upton is now the Brookhaven National Laboratory.) For this show, which was indeed written to be performed by the soldiers, Berlin wrote "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" and the melody of "God Bless America," which was actually cut from the show in its original form.

The show even ran briefly on Broadway in 1918 with a Camp Upton cast, according to the Internet Broadway Data Base.

After the war ended, the songs were put away, then brought out for the morale-boosting efforts of WW II. Berlin frequently rewrote and reused his songs; he revised the lyrics of "God Bless America" for Kate Smith and the rest, as they say, is history.