A frown....(only slight though)...for Mona Lisa Smile

So, why a frown for a film whose heart seems to be so much in the right place? After all, it is a movie in which a teacher (a la Mr. Chips and etc.) works diligently to elevate and liberate her students to be the best they can be, to follow their hearts, and develop their unique personhood apart from their parents' expectations or in some cases demands (a la Dead Poets Society). The problem that begins to emerge is all the "a la's". What does Mona Lisa Smile do that really is all that different?

Well, not a whole lot, really. You could say at least, that it is set at prestigious Wellesley College in the early 1950's with the ever pleasant and enjoyable Julia Roberts as the ground breakingteacher. She is easier on the eyes than say Robin Williams or Robert Donat. She endeavors to inspire the female students to dream bigger dreams than being well educated housewives married to the blue blood elite of America. Unfortunately, Roberts' portrayal of Dr. Katharine Watson never gets much beyond mild intensity and mild moral outrage at the housewife farm that she believes that this university had become. Incidentally, actual graduates from Wellesley complained that the film's depiction of the school during this period was inaccurate, causing a bit of controversy.

Roberts as Dr. Watson (pun intended) does have some good moments, to be fair...mostly in the last third of the film when she confronts Joan Brandwyn (played ably by Julia Stiles), a student whom Dr. Watson had pushed to be accepted into a very good law school. Joan confronts back, indicating that she truly wants to be a housewife rather than being a lawyer...building a life with her new husband and raising a family. It begins to dawn on Watson that perhaps her standards and her path are not for everyone...that what she was trying to do for her students was more similar to the agenda of the conservative establishment than she might want to admit.

This is redemptive not just for Roberts' character of Watson but also for the film as a whole. This reflective turn however, does not completely rescue the film from its preachy liberal stance that it applies with the force of a ball-peen hammer.In other words, you don't need to slam the viewer's face into the fact that the fifties were a conservative period in American history where women did lose some progressive movement that Rosie the Riveter had won during WWII.

Aside from it's thematic prejudices and its vast similarities to previous films about teachers, Mona Lisa Smile does emerge with some plusses to recommend it. It is beautifully filmed with locations at Wellesley....Kirsten Dunst and Maggie Gyllenhaal are very good in a sort of good girl/establishment girl vs. bad girl/outsider girl relationship even though it lacks some resolution along with its predictability.

But it seems in the end, that the students take Doc Watson into their hearts rather too quickly, riding their bikes alongside her taxi as she moves off into the sunset. While beautiful in execution this conclusion seems to be a bit too comfortable for a film that at one point wanted to be uncomfortable. Mona Lisa Smile, emerges as a film that wanted to teach without the syllabus like Doc Watson, but only ends up using much of the same old material. TH Reviews rating: 3 out of 5 stars!

Furious Review for Fury!

I sometimes wonder if witnessing the Nazis rise to power had anything to do with Fritz Lang's indictment of American "mob justice" in his first film for Hollywood...Fury . In the worst, most horrifying moments of the film, it strikes me as ironic that the country who styles itself as the most democratic and respectful haven of human rights in the world, should harbor such fascist type tendencies as lynching accused criminals, guilty or innocent. You can almost imagine brown shirts adorned with swastikas on the good townspeople of middle America as they rush to condemn an innocent man.






It is indeed a strange film, at times condemning as a small town mob tries to burn down a jail which houses Spencer Tracy, a man falsely accused of kidnapping a small child. Their crazed and longing faces lit by the fire of an attempted lynching, with children watching and participants eating hot-dogs as if they are at the ball park, are perfectly chilling. And then it falls into some almost hokey, overly melodramatic moments such as Spencer Tracy's courtship of Sylvia Sidney which fails to balance the more dramatic, confrontational themes of the film. It seems as if Lang is playing somewhat to Hollywood convention to assure himself of a successful place within its pantheon.

But apart from the conventions to taste that might threaten it, Fury is a very progressive critique of how even liberty loving Americans can get caught up in ignoring the due process of Law, even today as we tend to make snap judgments within the "get it now" news and information of the Internet. Spencer Tracy, on the edge of his hotel bed, listening with an eye for revenge to the trial of his "lynchers" should teach us all something about how dehumanizing mob justice and an eye for an eye can truly be. Fritz Lang's first American film deserves a respected place within his canon, even though films like M or Metropolis are better examples of his directing genius.


TH Reviews rating of Fury: 4 stars out of 5!

Don't Cross Burt!! A review and reflection on the Big B!

Criss Cross, while adding nothing earth shattering to the Noir Genre, is still a very fine textbook rendering of the form. Burt Lancaster seems to have made a million of these type films from the late forties into the early fifties, and few have done the genre as proud.

Lancaster is almost picture perfect as the love-sick schmuck Steve, combining a right mixture of toughness mixed with

a sensitivity that echoes Bogart in his prime and prefigures sensitive tough guys like Kevin Costner or Russell Crowe. I have always admired his movement on film...so graceful and athletic, as the circus acrobat he once was. Still, he could act, very believable in his portrayal of an armored truck driver who falls for the wrong kind of Dame, agreeing to help a gang rob one of his trucks to bankroll his relationship with the Dame...

Again, very predictable...but the execution is worth the view....as in tasty Yvonne DeCarlo as the black widow dame who uses her sex appeal and vulnerability as a way of claiming power and resources to back it up.

Noir has always needed this kind of bad girl on the make archetype who at one time entices and emasculates the powerful men she welcomes into her snare. DeCarlo does her job well, a la Lauren Bacall, and stands up nicely to all the boys in the film.

And finally, there is Dan Dureya, perhaps my all time favorite sleazy gangster player from this period of Hollywood...always insanity hidden in an almost likable, laconic approach...he has always been the friend you mother instantly hated while growing up...the one who most certainly would lead you wrong. He is a perfect, slightly comic foil to Lancaster's All American Football Star.

If Criss Cross is not the most memorable, or original of Film Noir offerings, what of it? It is a film that is most entertaining and exciting even if you kind of figure out how it's going to end about halfway through. Well worth the time!

TH Review's Rating: A fond four out of five stars!!

Spence and King Gable search for Texas Tea...a review!

Most environmentalists will cringe while watching oil wildcatters Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable basically win and then lose fortunes while pockmarking the landscape with their oil rigs. The two pals do a lot of frettin' and fussin' over the incomparable Claudette Colbert who eventually has eyes only for Clark the King. Unfortunately, Clark has some eyes for the shapely and sultry Hedy Lamarr (can't disagree with the King on that!).

I am a big fan of all these worthies, but something just doesn't add up with Boom Town...it seems to want to be too many things at the same time, perhaps. You could call it a Western, drama, comedy, or romance...but it seems to miss the mark more often than not in attempting any of these. The four stars seem wooden and predictable in this, even the awesome Tracy....Gable plays Gable and Colbert seems too glamourous for the dowdy role of wife meekly following Gable who is wildcatting in more ways than one. The film moves at a frenetic pace, perhaps to mimic the roller-coaster fortunes of the oil industry in the salad days of the early twentieth century....but it does leave one sort of out of breath and doesn't allow for much in the way of character development.

Frank Morgan shows up to basically play the same archetype character he played in the Wizard of Oz

along with Chill Wills as a straight shootin' deputy sheriff who ends up working for Gable as a cook. They provide some nice comic moments to balance out the chest thumping of Gable and Spence, but Boom Town will never supplant Gone with the Wind or Captains Courageous for me.

TH Reviews rating: Call it 3.5 stars out of five!

Fritz Lang did some wonderful Hollywood films in the early forties after he escaped from Hitler's Germany...the silent auteur made a great transition to American talkies and The Woman in the Window is a wonderful example. Like much of Lang's work (and of course Alfred Hitchcock's) we begin with a simple man in simple circumstances that become more and more complicated as the choices he makes transforms his life with often twisted and dark consequences to those choices. In Woman, Lang begins with a simple middle-aged man longing for adventure and excitement outside his often staid and mundane life. He will get much more than he bargained for....

I am becoming more and more a fan of the great Edward G. Robinson who takes a more sedate turn not as his usual heavy or gangster, but as a meek and mild assistant professor who takes an unexpected dark path for his mid life crisis. Joan Bennett, a favorite of Lang's, is gorgeous but reveals a talented acting depth to her enormous glamour.

Be careful, though! Lang will take you into some interesting dark corners with this one...there is a wonderful twist at the end that almost makes this dark comedy...along with the almost textbook Noir touches. Fritz Lang is as good as Hitchcock was in dropping in little revealing details that drop dark hints as to mood, motivation, and relationship. Dan Duryea shows up as a slimy, blackmailing hood (did he ever play a nice guy?!) and you have a marvelous

little dark confection for your Noir appetites!

TH Reviews Rating: An easy to grant five of five stars!!

Bond is back, according to your perspective!

There has been much disagreement on the merits of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, the latest entries in the James Bond canon of films stretching to over 50 years and 22 films. These two films represent a more realistic and gritty turn in the series...presenting a more vulnerable Bond who is at the beginning of his legendary career. As a reader of the original Bond stories by Ian Fleming, I have largely applauded this new move, reminding me of the Timothy Dalton films (The Living Daylights, License to Kill), George Lazenby (On Her Majesty's Secret Service), and Sean Connery (From Russia With Love).

There are those who miss the super sci-fi gadgetry and the more playboy womanizing aspects of the film character...I missed both for about 5 minutes. The new Bond is much more interesting to me...a professional who, to his sometime detriment, has a soul and a conscience. This Bond feels pain and grief and rage. Sometimes you just had to wonder if Roger Moore felt anything when he would drop his bon mots while kicking butt and taking names!

Now in the flower of my youth, say about age 12-13, I simply adored the Bond who always came out smelling like a rose at the end with flags a-flying along with the beneficent smiles of Queen and Country blessing him....with lots of T and A thrown in for good measure. I loved the gadgetry and looked forward to the Q sequences in which Bond would receive his equipment and a stern lecture on their usage. But further into my dotage (45-46), I began to tire of the same old, same old Bond and have found myself responding well to a new kind of Bond who is unsure of himself at times and even more unsure of his spy masters as well. The only gadgets here are the computers and a handy cell phone.

With Bond 23 coming out perhaps in another year, I returned to watch Quantum of Solace to whet my appetite for another Craig Bond film and to reflect on my enjoyment... and some reservations of this return to brass tacks for a much beloved film series.

Quantum of Solace (2008), continues the reboot story of a younger James Bond (Daniel Craig) who is learning on the job of how to be a better, more effective spy...professional and yet self aware, calculating but not to the expense of honor or turning rogue. Beginning with the events of Casino Royale and continuing....Bond is investigating a shadowy organization called Quantum, involved with international crime and terrorism and the main player in the death of Bond's lover Vesper Lynn. With this background, Bond infiltrates Quantum to discover a plot to overthrow the government of Bolivia and to sell back water rights.........while the US and British governments plot in the background to keep the flow of oil continuing through their pipelines.

Sound confusing? We have touched on perhaps the main problem with QS in that with the new Bond reality of crisscross betrayal and international politics mixed with greed for power and natural resources...the viewer can get caught up in the connections and plot shifts, leaving him distracted and confused. Critic Roger Ebert has written that Bond is not an action film hero...suggesting for me that Bond should never be regulated to a faceless hero merely going through the motions of explosions, gun or fist fights, and car chases. Casino Royale had a nice balance of providing the deepness of motivation and relationship with the gee whiz explosions of the latest action flick. Unfortunately QS trades a bit too much on the intrigue and cross betrayals, and one wishes it would get back to the incredible and professional action sequences which aid the film's attractiveness greatly.

Along with the action sequences, QS succeeds with me ultimately because it continues the angst of Bond, who is struggling to deal with his grief over Vesper's death while searching for revenge. Bond is also realizing that there are no longer white hats or black hats, just the gray, indistinct hats of nations with "economic" or "political" interests...certainly not the good vs. evil struggles of the earlier Bond movies. No wonder this new Bond seems so much more grim and even at times unpleasant...there are just too many people to distrust, including himself.

TH Reviews rating of Quantum Solace: 3.5 stars out of 5...a recommended view!!

TH Reviews drives by night and by day!

An easy misunderstanding about They Drive by Night is that Humphrey Bogart is the star of the film...but alas, Bogart was still mired in his indentured servitude to Warner Brothers as a contract player. Bogart was unhappy during his period from The Petrified Forest to The Maltese Falcon (1936 to 1941) generally playing second banana (or even third!) to more established stars as James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, and of course, as in TDBN, to George Raft. Bogart usually was the bullet fodder who got gunned down in the third reel by the star...but good things still lay in the future for the future super star.

Actually Raft could sympathize with Bogart to a certain extent....both were type cast as wiseguys in several Warner gangster films. Warner's was a bit notorious in recycling gangster stories, but had hit the gold mine with their on the cheap crime films that were drawing well from Depression era audiences.

So They Drive By Night was a departure for both...the story of two brothers trying to make it as independent truckers in an often corrupt and dangerous industry. After a crash that destroys their truck and takes off Bogie's right arm...the brothers have to work for a trucking company run by The Skipper's dad...Alan Hale Sr. In the wings waits smoky Ida Lupino, the wife of Hale with an eye for Raft and Hale's bucks. All in all, a nice and boiling pot of a noir film that does not involve detectives but does involve murder.

Raoul Walsh, veteran director of silent films and some of the best action adventure films around...not to mention a few of Warner's gangster films, does good work here. But Bogart, even in his limited screen time, shows why no one remembers George Raft but adores Bogie. Bogart does so much with little...a gesture or tick to his face...a particularly fine scene involves Bogart breaking down about his lost arm and disability at the dinner table. Raft was a minimalist kind of actor like Bogart, but as the hero, seems a little wooden even when faced with the guilt of his brother's injury or romancing yummy Ann Sheridan.

Which leaves the mystery of Ida Lupino. She does well at first as the femme fatale wife of Hale...but her descent into murderous mania seems a bit cheesy to the 21st century eye...especially her fortuitous breakdown in the courtroom scene. Lupino was well regarded at this time, but she seems to be munching the scenery a bit in this turn. Better things were ahead for her as well.

Lupino, Walsh, and Bogart would get to team up on the film that would finally catapult Bogart to his early forties classics The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. It would be High Sierra and it would be the last true Warner's gangster film for Bogie...but finally he would be in a starring role which he would make the most of, becoming arguably, the greatest star of the Classic Hollywood era!

As for They Drive, it is a nice, little dark confection....a nice break from the usual Warner's fare, but fairly predictable...the bad guy(girl) gets theirs, Raft gets his girl, and Bogart gets the shaft, but not for much longer....3.8 stars out of five!