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!

TH Reviews laughs at Andy Hardy!

Entertaining enough for a few smiles and a laugh or two, Love Laughs at Andy Hardy is not the strongest addition to the franchise. These films have never been profound film making but represent a quaint snapshot of late thirties to mid forties Americana.

Perhaps most disappointing is the real lack of a romantic lead for Andy...at least no one at the level of a Judy Garland anyway. There was of course super attractive, but super tall Coffee, an interesting and fun character, but certainly not for the vertically challenged Andy.

All the other hallmarks are here, such as the all knowing, wise father, Judge Hardy, who helps Andy think through a busted love affair at college. It does feel at this point in the franchise, that all the successful wrinkles were worn out. Not a waste of time, though, to experience what Hollywood thought college life around 1946 was like!

TH Reviews rating: slightly dim 3.5 stars!

Review of a Wimpy Kid!!

I always have mixed feelings when a film like Diary of a Wimpy Kid comes out....I initially feel elation and immediately call over my tween daughter to exult over the fact that Hollywood has finally made a film version of a tremendously beloved book that we have shared... But then I feel anxiety that the film will not adequately capture the essence and feel of the book, or perhaps not bother at all, merely slapping the brand name on their crappy flick to sell it to a lot of know nothing goobs who love to flush their money down the....(Whoops, sorry I kind of lost it there!) At the end of viewing Diary, I came to the conclusion that my feelings about this film were....well, mixed.

In case you don't read much young adult or tween literature, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a journal (not a diary!) kept by a boy named Greg Heffley about his experiences of being a new six grader at his local junior high. Sprinkled among the hilarious text are cartoons of himself, his family, friends and enemies. The whole mix is really a quite hilarious meditation on standing out and fitting in, reminding me of Matt Groenig's Life in Hell or The Simpsons. It took me back to my own experience of Junior High...struggling to find a personal identity or noticing girls for the first time or exploring the depths of school popularity.

Animation and art were taken from the books to adorn the beginning and end credits along with being sprinkled liberally through the film at certain points and this was quite entertaining...but it underscored a problem I have with the film and that is the casting of at least of the hero character Greg Heffley and his family...they all seem too blow dried and good looking to fully inhabit the characters we see portrayed in the hilarious books. I understand that in the books, Greg and his family are rendered in the style that he sees them...goofy and sometimes silly or gross. Unfortunately the actors cast seem almost too attractive to live up to the book's characterizations. The film does a better job in the casting of Greg's friends and classmates, particularly Rowley, played by Robert Capron. Capron really steals the show and gets some of the film's best lines and most comic moments.

But to be fair, most of the time, Diary gets it right, picking up on the hilarious and yet heartbreaking moments of discovering yourself and how that self fits into the whole scheme of things.....Greg tries out for athletics, the school newspaper, crossing guards in an effort to realize popularity. This will cause him to question his most important relationships with his best friend Rowley and his family. Being a family film meant to draw in kids and amuse their parents who have been drug along, Diary does fall into some time honored (and sleep inducing) cliches...like being true to yourself and your friends and various instances of farting, belching, and other poopy humor techniques. But in the final estimation, I felt entertained, a little wiser, and not ready to run screaming from the room as I do from most live action Disney comedies! Diary of a Wimpy Kid is worth the effort of your family to view even with the PG rating for older children.

Rating of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: A reserved 3.5 stars!!

Return to "Away We Go"!

Seeing this again with my wife recently was a real treat...it was and is a lovely and sweet Independent Romantic Comedy-Drama...amazing that I wrote this almost exactly a year ago...a day before my anniversary with my own "Verona", the lovely and talented Shelly...it kind of echoes our own gypsy journey of the past twenty years, not to mention our nearly five year adventure as parents of our sweet Breianna! So enjoy and don't forget...lots of great Indy stuff out there:

Sweet and engaging, Away We Go is the kind of Indy comedy that entices me back again and again to Independent film. Goofy and kooky with lots of opportunity for its very good cast to stretch their chops, Away We Go is the off beat story of Burt and Verona who are having a baby and are searching for a place of emotional security and deepness to have that child, in short looking for community with either friends or family. This search makes the film essentially a road picture made up of separate but lightly connected episodes. Burt and Verona have the opportunity to sample the family communities of their various family and friends and come to a momentous but not necessarily surprising conclusion. The enduring grace and light of this film is the relationship of Burt and Verona who love each other deeply but wonder if they are truly doing a "good job" preparing their lives for another. Worthy of note are Jeff Daniels and Catherine O'Hara as Burt's rather laid back parents. As with most independents, this film has a pace and plot that develops within a more gradual sense of time...so most main stream rom-com lovers may feel frustrated with this.

Really a 4.5 star film, Away We Go quietly earns it's A- grade. 10/05/09