Movie Review: Cheaper by the Dozen
Year of Release: 1950
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Walter Lang
Cast: Clifton Webb, Jeanne Crain, Myrna Loy, Betty Lynn
Plot outline: Based on the real-life story of the Gilbreth family, Frank Gilbreth, Sr., a pioneering efficiency expert, tests his theories on his large family (IMDb).
The story was originally a book by Ann Gilbreth, Frank Gilbreth’s eldest daughter. It is very difficult to say how close the movie is to the experiences of the real family, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were very close. What parents of 12 children wouldn’t be experts of time efficiency? Frank Sr. is a very funny father. He is a quirky, endearing, loving and crazy man. Such characteristics make for an interesting father. One disappointing part of the movie is that you do not get a full sense of each character. You see a few crazy things Frank does and you laugh. But you really don’t understand exactly how the children feel about their father’s behaviour. You get to love Frank and like Lillian, and Ann, but you don’t know anything else about the remaining 11 family members. The rest of the characters were made to be so unessential that I don’t even remember their names. Now it isn’t to say that this is a bad movie or anything like that. It is definitely a fun family movie to watch. But it was more like watching one 86 minute long episode of Leave it to Beaver. I think I would have really liked to see the entire family incorporated to make it funnier, even if it meant that the movie would be longer. (KV)
My judgement: **1/2 out of 4 stars
Movie Review: Because of Him
Year of Release: 1946
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Richard Wallace
Cast: Deanna Durbin, Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone
Plot outline: A young woman who wants to break into the theater schemes to become the protege of a famous Broadway star (IMDb).
Although Deanna Durbin gets the top billing, the movie unquestionably belongs to Charles Laughton. His performance is magnificently expansive. This, unfortunately, can not be said of Miss Durbin. Her vocal chords are as melodious as ever, but she only sings three songs: "Lover," "Danny Boy" and "Goodbye" - obviously because she is so busy acting. And incidentally, all Durbin's efforts to convince the great John Sheridan that she is a promising young actress, quite worthy of becoming his leading lady, ironically fail until she overwhelms him with a rendition of "Danny Boy." The point is that she sings the sentimental Irish ballad with a true feeling for its pathos. An encore would certainly, have been in order. On the whole, the movie is a pleasant-enough entertainment, chiefly because Mr. Laughton had the wisdom to toss restraint out the door. Franchot Tone plays a polished playwright - it would be nice to meet an unpolished one for a change - with a high degree of petulance and naivete, while Helen Broderick and Donald Meek fare a little better in lesser roles. But the fact which can't be stressed too strongly is that Miss Durbin should make the most of her greatest asset: her voice. (NYT)
My judgement: ** out of 4 stars
Gorillas in the Mist
Year of Release: 1988
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Michael Apted
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Bryan Brown, Julie Harris, John Omirah Miluwi
Plot outline: The story of anthropologist Dian Fossey, centering around the extensive work she accomplished with gorillas, and her murder in Rwanda in 1985 (IMDb).
Gorillas in the Mist tells a life story that many people already know: what Dian Fossey accomplished and what happened to her, but it doesn't tell us who she was, and at the end that's what we want to know. Here is a movie that has gone to great lengths to be technically accomplished - the shots of the apes are everything we could wish for - but the screenplay has been skimped on, and there is a person missing here somewhere. What we are really dealing with here are two stories that do not fit together very easily. Do we care more about the public Fossey, or the private? Is her work more important, or her madness? In these modern times we demand the whole life. We say we are realists and don't want the autobiography cleaned up for a "screen version," but the result is a movie that is much more depressing and shapeless than it should be. The parabolas are wrong; Fossey's work fills us with joy, but her fate fills us with confusion and dismay. Perhaps a Hollywood cop-out would have been more satisfactory, with Fossey against the bad guys and everyone assigned their role, and some kind of a happy ending.We leave the theater feeling that when Fossey was buried in her beloved jungle, the third act of the movie was buried there, too. (RE)
My judgement: **1/2 out of 4 stars
Movie Review: It Started with Eve
Year of Release: 1941
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Henry Koster
Cast: Deanna Durbin, Charles Laughton, Robert Cummings
Plot outline: A young man asks a hat check girl to pose as his fiancee in order to make his dying father's last moments happy. However, the old man's health takes a turn for the better and now he doesn't know how to break the news that he's engaged to someone else, especially since his father is so taken with the impostor (IMDb).
Deanna Durbin had a beautiful singing voice and was an accomplished pianist. That may have been what drew the audiences of the day to her movies, but what makes It Started with Eve entertaining isn't the music, which is secondary, but the side-splitting comic situations the characters find themselves in. The characters are real, not actors in a comedy punctuating comic moments. For example, when Durbin and the scene-stealing Charles Laughton sit at a table in a nightclub and laugh themselves silly over something amusing that happens involving a lambchop. A lesser comedy would have played the gag straight-faced, evoked the requisite laughs, and moved on. Here, the characters laugh with the audience, elaborating on the silly hilarity of the gag with short phrases spat out between guffaws. In addition, there's more substance to the movie than the usual situational comedy. Mixed in are some engrossing emotional moments - and unlike many comedies that do this awkwardly, these are neither gratuitous nor disruptive to the movie's flow. (AAG)
My judgement: *** out of 4 stars
Movie Review: Far from Heaven
Year of Release: 2002
Country of Origin: USA, France
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson
Plot outline: In 1950s Connecticut, a housewife faces a marital crisis and mounting racial tensions in the outside world (IMDb).
In doing research on homosexuality for the movie, Todd Haynes discovered that the '50s weren't as repressive as he first thought. "There were breakthroughs in the late '40s and in some writings, doctors were saying that this was not a sickness and that you really can't change it. So it was actually more progressive than I thought," he says. The movie's three main characters are all oppressed yet Cathy's suffrage is the most extreme. Frank can hide beneath the guise of heterosexuality and Raymond can move to another state but there's no way for Cathy to conceal her gender. Haynes begs that we apply his latest "woman's picture" to the world today. Fifty years after the events depicted in this movie, do we treat blacks, gays and women much differently? Elmer Bernstein's score punctuates key moments with expert precision, complimenting the tone of the characters' voices and the traumas written on their faces. When Frank enters an underground gay bar, the camera evokes the character's fear with a splash of menacing greens and muted reds. More remarkable, though, is how the movie seemingly loses its color when things begin to go wrong for Cathy. Haynes seemingly suggests that there is no need for labels (gay and straight, black and white, inside and outside) if people are willing to listen to others. Cathy is drawn to Frank not because of his race or because of her own sense of not-being but because he is willing to listen to her voice. Here is a movie of great humanism that applies as much to the '50s as it does to the world today and everyone who inhabits it. The movie's final shot evokes a changing season and perhaps a changing cultural tide. (EG)
My judgement: *** out of 4 stars
Year of Release: 1950
