poetcomic1 Reviews

A Moon for the Misbegotten (1975 TV Movie)

Colleen Dewhurst - A Force of Nature In an 'Impossible' Play

[10/10 · 8 May 2022]

This is as delicate and affectionate a play as 'Ah, Wilderness', the 'comic valentine' O'Neill wrote to the year 1906. This is above all a heart-breaking farewell, to O'Neill's older brother who died an alcoholic.

If you know Long Day's Journey Into Night, this play takes place some years later for the Tyrone/ O'Neil family. The mother two years after the events in Long Day's Journey went into a convent in New York and kicked her drug addiction for good and recovered her lost faith 'she had in her convent days'. Then she and. Jamie were together and he stopped drinking. Jamie began drinking again and died soon after.

Jason Robards is blessed/cursed with the highly developed character of Jamie here too but in this production he shades and softens the self hate and despair with a subtle, wistful longing for forgiveness and for faith. He brilliantly makes us see the Broadway drunken cynicism beginning to crumble and a wounded, child-like self glimpsed underneath.

NO ONE ever did what Colleen Dewhurst does in this production. She is a FORCE OF NATURE. Cherry Jones a great actress did an elegantly nuanced Josie but it just didn't match Colleen.

Josie is one of the most audacious creations in modern theater: mythological almost, The Virgin Mother, the rough and bawdy virgin and her whole role in the play comes down to her being able to embody 'the breast on which the wounded son can find forgiveness and peace'. Dewhurst moves so instinctively and with an animal grace - all the contrived method actors and carefully thought out bits of business look silly as I watched her in this.

I can't help thinking that Jason Robards really did find peace for the character of Jamie he had lived with so many hundreds of soul-scorching performances and for the misery of his own drinking in real life. It almost seems that Robards is giving Jaimie peace on her breast.

A Yank in the R.A.F. (1941)

Bob Hopkins (Hoppy) Pitched This to Zanuck in nine words

[23 April 2022]

'Hoppy' was not a writer or gag man but an early master of the one line pitch, he had an incredible nose for money making ideas. He stopped Zanuck once in the hallway and poking him in the shoulder and said,. TYRONE POWER.....call it A YANK IN THE R. A. F. Zanuck was immediately smitten with the idea and though not a masterpiece it was so damned TIMELY that it made a LOT of money.

San Francisco (1936)

Thanks "Hoppy" For this Quintessential Hollywood Feast

[8/10 · 23 April 2022]

The Hoppy we have to thank for this movie is Bob Hopkins. Bernie Hyman the producer was in conference when Bob Hopkins poked his hed in the door pointed at Hyman and said "Jeanette Macdonald is a dance hall girl, Clark Gable her boss and Spencer Tracy is a priest.... they all get caught in the effing San Francisco earthquake. Call it San Francisco and you're IN." Hoppy was not a writer, not a gagmen but what we would call today a genius of 'high concept, the one sentence pitch. This movie is his vision.

All My Sons (1948)

Edward G. Robinson Is The Powerhouse, Drops the 'Red Propaganda' of the Play (thank God)

[9/10 · 10 April 2022]

This has been 'sanitized' of the preachy anti-capitalist boilerplate of the stage version and the movie hones it all down to very human tragedy of intense power. The backyard (which is the only set in the Broadway version) becomes central to the movie but the factory, prison, and other settings enrich the dialogue and plot. Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes was filmed stripped of its hard left preaching and it is a tremendous improvement. Robinson and Lancaster are magnificent.

Whistle Down the Wind (1961)

Got on My Nerves 50 Years Ago as it Did Today

[6/10 · 8 April 2022]

This is one of those fey little conceits you can summarize in a few sentences. The music is obtrusive, dreadful and repetitious. The situation is not believable, especially for Hayley at the age of 15 playing 12. When I look at the splendid range of emotional responses the film Tiger Bay brought out of Hayley Mills, I keep waiting for the movie to draw on her gifts and use them...and it does not. The film plods through its plot with an unshakeable earnestness and 'hit you over the head' symbolism. Hayley was an astonishing talent - she used a richer and more suggestive range of acting skills in Disney's Pollyana than she does here!

I've Got a Secret (1952–1967)

A Game the Panelists Never Win

[2/10 · 8 March 2022]

I love WHAT'S MY LINE and many other old panel shows but despise this show and find it absolutely unwatchable because NO ONE EVER GUESSES THE SECRET. I have watched a dozen shows and no one has ever gotten even CLOSE to guessing. The game has to matter.

Alice Adams (1935)

A Comic Valentine, Mid Depression to the Early 1920's

[8/10 · 6 January 2022]

This film was quite popular as a sly look at a period a mere 15 years earlier and is one of the few great American comedy of manners. The lower middle class Adams Family is deliciously skewed but the great Fred Stone is its stolid anchor in reality. Katherine's Alice is so full of naive longing that we care deeply about her even as we wince at her faux pas.

Hattie McDaniel plays an unforgettable comic role that almost steals the film. She is a low class black cook who is hired to play the role of 'family servant' in a uniform to impress the society beau of Hepburn. Her comic timing is exquisite, especially corralling a stray Brussels sprout.

I would give this an extra star if Fred McMurray dumped her in the end as he should have (this is the first of his 'soft at the center' bad boy roles such as Caine Mutiny, The Apartment etc. But they don't let him be 'bad' and he's best when he's bad.

This oddly reminds me of another film Roxy Hart (later made into the musical Chicago) which looked fondly back on 1920's from not much later (1942). Both films are in a class of nostalgia for a recent past. The depression itself made those years seem so long ago.

Password Plus (1979–1982)

THe PERFECTION of the Game of Password

[7 December 2021]

This version of Password first of all did away with the worst single aspect of the original game. In the original, the more you guess the fewer points you get when you are finally right you get maybe one or two points. It was strangely counter-intuitive. The one who guesses the word last gets a chance at the board.

The one minute lightning round gets faded out and replaced by the alphabetics which has the suspense of the lightning round with the 'ticking clock' but the large backdrop alphabet set and the two facing chairs is wonderful - the team leaves the panel set and faces each other.

$10,000 Pyramid also perfected this set up to the highest level of suspense and it was Betty White's favorite game (after Password). I never liked Super Password as much.

Army of Shadows (1969)

Numerous 'Moments' of Pure Unadulterated Power

[10/10 · 24 November 2021]

This is THE French resistance film. The killing of the young traitor is quite simply unforgettable and MORALLY terrifying as is the escape from Gestapo headquarters by killing the guard with his own knife. Clearly our hero's plan is to kill the guard and instruct his unknown fellow prisoner beside him to run right out the door and we hear him draw fire as Lino Ventura runs to the left and get away. Another morally disturbing moment as he uses this stranger to escape and continue his vital work. Simone Signoret as Mathilde was love at first sight for me.... amazing role and the most morally terrifying ending of all comes through her. Not a 'shoot em up' good guys, bad guys movie but REAL and endlessly fascinating.

Klute (1971)

1/2 Character Study and 1/2 Thriller

[10/10 · 21 November 2021]

Two different kinds of suspense in this film. The stalker story of course but then also the subtle suspense of Klute and Bree's interrelationship. I lived in New York of this period and I find endlessly fascinating details in every scene. LITTLE moments such as Bree's self-deprecating smile as she reads a pop astrology book or the famous glance at her wristwatch as she moans in fake ecstasy.

You home town high school actors who dream of New York auditions - check out Fonda's audition for a play in which she does an intense mesmerizing reading without a moment's prep, gets dismissed and another actor will do the same scene and another. New York theater is brutal to get into and Bree's need of being in command and 'acting' is not to be underrated as a not minor reason for her prostitution.

It is hard to believe but the movie script had a MALE therapist for Bree till Fonda read it and said "ARE YOU CRAZY!!!" and they got an excellent woman actress veteran of 50's live TV to play the role with perfect poise.

One can argue about the merits of this film but I'll only say I 've seen it a half dozen times and could watch it again tonight. Every time I find new things in the film I had missed.

The Snake Pit (1948)

Unwatchable Now Like Many 'Message' Movies

[5/10 · 20 November 2021]

Wow, the 'patients' lay on the ham so thick it is unintentionally hilarious and even worse fake, fake, fake. The REAL author of the screenplay, Arthur Laurents, who got swindled out of his credit watched the studio stick on its cloying 'epiphany' ending. The crucial role of de Haviland's husband was a real piece of wood even though his role was VITAL. The 'motor' behind her madness was to have been an incestuous father but this could not even be hinted at. Frankly, Olivia de Haviland is not a great actress, (except The Heiress) but rather an accomplished and limited movie star. I love her at her best but her one-note 'sweetness' never really changes into anything else. The psychology is oddly unconvincing - this is an essential to such a film.

It's a Man's World (1962–1963)

J. D. SALINGER LIKED THIS

[9/10 · 29 September 2021]

Peter Tewkesbury ALMOST made a TV show of Salinger short story 'For Esme With Love and Squalor' but the two men quarreled about casting. There is a subtle 'Salinger' feel to this series and it caught the imagination of high school-college age youth the way Catcher in the Rye once did. Last time I saw Peter he was running a coop food store in Vermont. Glen Corbett was a nude gay model for physique magazines throughout the fifties and note how he keeps himself well under wraps here.

How ironic that they canceled a show that fit perfectly into the youth demographic TV dreams of capturinng.

The Sea Hawk (1940)

STILL On the Screen in 1950's of My Boyhood

[10/10 · 23 July 2021]

The relentless Korngold score heightens the entire movie, It is hard to say who is more beautiful Brenda Marshall or Errol Flynn. Only certain older movies would bring in the kids back the fifties Saturday matinees, Robin Hood, And this as well. The climactic sword fight is unforgettable, the candle slicing, , the giant shadows, the movement from room to room up and down stairs,

Donnie Darko (2001)

Overloaded Plate of Weirdness, Too Much Work to Get It

[6/10 · 11 July 2021]

Time travel movie without one fraction of the fun usual to the genre. Lots of great moments don't add up to a film. The best thing in the movie is a sincere and committed Jake Gyllenhall giving himself completely to each scene though even he confessed he had no idea what the movie is about. The period Movie Video style of overlaying incomprehensible rock music of surpassing mediocrity over entire scenes makes one cringe now.

No Darth Vader 'I am your father' moments because the story and the movie are not good enough to ever truly SURPRISE us. Many of the roles were caricatures and done a bit broadly and not believable.

I wanted to like this and was sorely disappointed.

The Big Sleep (1946)

The House on Laverne Terrace

[10/10 · 18 May 2021]

Again and again the story and the characters return to Geiger's house on Laverne Terrace. It is an unforgettable setting. A gloomy tomb of a place done in mock Oriental junk and at the center of the main room a meditating Buddha face that opens up into a hidden camera that has done duty no doubt for countless facts of pornography and blackmail. Geiger himself is in the first scene at home dead, then his body is gone leaving a large blood stain and the third time he is BACK again on his bed laid out as for a funeral and wearing either a Catholic scapular or what could be an ornate Masonic vestment. Pornography & blackmail (i.e. Sex and money) permeate this dreary little house like a permanent stain. Laverne Terrace is one of the great 'addresses' of film noir.

Compulsion (1959)

"St. Leopold" At the End of His Life

[8/10 · 6 May 2021]

Leopold was paroled after years of being a model prisoner, planning all kinds of prison reforms, and when released did philanthropic work in Puerto Rico. Interesting that Meyer Levin, author of book on which this film is based said, this amazingly redeemed man just a few times gave Levin a chill as it became clear that this character of 'St. Leopold' was just another creation of a true psychopath. The mocking narcissistic smirk was still there under it all.

Chinatown (1974)

A Few Asides...

[10/10 · 26 March 2021]

Mrs. Mulwray is NOT a femme fatale, she is actually the ONLY honest and sincere person in the film. One subject of the film is Jake's pattern of being harmful to the women he cares about. The mysterious 'other' woman he failed to save in Chinatown hangs over the story, particularly in scenes with Escobar, who is somehow mixed up in that previous personal disaster. There is much we don't know. The St. Francis Dam failure in the 1920's was indeed due to faulty foundations and cost almost 500 lives. Los Angeles is desert and the movie in many scenes makes us feel the encroaching dust, heat and lifelessness being held at bay. Nandu Hinds played Jake's secretary Sophie with the doll-like face. This small but unforgettable role was her ONLY screen credit. She went on to be one of the top Beverly Hills / Rodeo Drive etc. Real estate agents and is still at work.

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

A Lot of Fun IF You Fast Forward

[7/10 · 24 March 2021]

Not great but FUN when we are IN THE STORY - when we are away from the magazine, away from Miranda away from the people at the magazine it is DEAD TIME, another movie, not fun. If you fast forward through her boyfriend, her friends, her life outside the magazine you will enjoy this movie MUCH more. the boyfriend in particular was a 'written by the numbers' thankless role and every actor in her 'circle of friends' were TV level actors with 'filler dialogue. The problem is that we did not care about these people and we did not enjoy her with them.

Poirot: Murder in the Mews (1989) Season 1, Episode 2

Agatha Christie and Yet Another DELICIOUS Idea

[9/10 · 27 February 2021]

This is a fresh, early entry in the series and returning to it after years of other Poirots it is still sharp, fresh and beautifully done. WARNING SPOILER: Christie, pondering the classic situation of making a murder look like a suicide got the genius idea of reversing the formula and making a suicide look like a murder in order to get someone hung. So this is what Poirot often in the series wishes for - a chance to solve the murder BEFORE it happens. Billy Wilder, the director of Witness for the Prosecution said of Lady Agatha, of a 100 good screenwriters, only one will be a master of plotting and this is wha makes her so special.

Fire Maidens of Outer Space (1956)

Fascinatingly Excruciatingly SLOW

[1/10 · 9 February 2021]

There are techniques of foreshadowing, scene construction, creating at least minimal interest that my dorky uncle making our home movies in the sixties would use.... that elude the makers of this film. If you were to edit this film into nothing but scenes of people sitting still, moving from one place to another and talking - there would be perhaps six minutes of things actually happening. The 'sexy' premise never gets further than a few sophomoric jokes and NO steam, whatsoever. Every male in this film gives the impression of a gay young man feigning interest in girls. The monster is a man in a mask with a soiled union suit and as MST3000 says "Resembles a barbecued mime."

The Adventures of Spin and Marty (1955)

The Dream of Belonging

[8/10 · 24 January 2021]

Walt Disney used to come down alone to sit on the ranch set and chat with Harry Carey Jr. Everybody remembers the Davey Crockett craze and the coonskin hats but Disney told Carey that they got MUCH more mail for Spin and Marty and it was mostly little boys who longed to go to the Ranch that summer. I myself as a little boy would make my mom put on my official Triple R ranch t shirt on as I watched the show. As I sit and watch this, now in my sixties I STILL feel the lost dream of male belonging that has been crushed and misshapen and parodied to death.

Naked City: Portrait of a Painter (1962) Season 3, Episode 14

Great Acting and an Extra Star for Hitchcock Presents Type Surprise Ending

[9/10 · 14 January 2021]

Shatner was first rate and riveting in this psychological murder mystery. In later years he lost his intensity and his 'presence'. The scene with him and the psychiatrist played by an excellent Theodore Bickel was powerful and disturbing. I gave this an extra star because it had an ending line that REALLY throws you for loop and would have been perfect for an Alfred Hitchcock Hour. I'll not give it away but it is a REAL surprise.

Damn Yankees (1958)

LOTS of Fun But Just ONE Baffling Thing

[8/10 · 11 January 2021]

Gwen Verdon takes top honors and I am not going to bother repeating the numerous well deserved accolades for the many great numbers, dances and even Tab Hunter acquits himself nicely in such difficult numbers as Two Lost Souls. One thing though, I find utterly baffling. I cannot understand: HOW can they make a movie with Tab Hunter at the height of his fame when he was called 'The American Adonis' and have him play an athletic role with many scenes in a locker room and somehow NEVER manage to show him EVEN ONCE WITH HIS SHIRT OFF! However they manage to show Ray Walston doing a dance in his jockey underpants (!) I'm fond of Ray but that is not something I need to see.

Naked City: The One Marked Hot Gives Cold (1962) Season 3, Episode 23

TOP Talent, Great Script, Rich, Flavorful Character in Each Role

[10/10 · 6 January 2021]

Robert Duvall combines his eerie penchant for underplaying and 'quiet' acting with explosive anger and rage. Madeleine Sherwood, a favorite of Tennessee Williams plays brings to life an adulterous, nasty child-woman. Her scene falling apart under questioning was perfection! Edward Andrews a top character actor too often pigeon-holed into 'business man' roles gets to show his acting chops as well! The script is by one abrams S. Ginnes who did THIRTEEN Naked City scripts - i just recently watched the explosive and wonderful 'Man Without A Skin which was also by him. He wrote loads of great classic TV including Route 66 etc.

I cancelled Netflix. From here on out I watch CLASSIC top notch golden age television shows like this.

Naked City: The Day the Island Almost Sank (1961) Season 2, Episode 31

Great Offbeat Murderer Is a Fine Comic Actor Showing His Dark Side

[9/10 · 6 January 2021]

Just a little aside. I always loved the work of Roger Carmel, a solid presence for years of great television, movies and even the voice of 'Smoky the Bear'! His open cheerful face, reassuring bulk and pleasant voice REALLY were twisted into an unexpected murderous streak in this uncharacteristic role and he was unsettling and great. The 'boys' sure did a good job of conveying their fatigue, in once scene Frank has to make a visible to go up three steps into the station house! If you want to see Carmel at his comic best watch this on Youtube Dick Van Dyke Show "It Wouldn't Hurt Them to Give Us a Raise' in which he is an unforgettable accountant!