Rants and Ruminations

The best Tony Curtis movies

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Tony Curtis has died.  He was a very handsome and sexy guy, and the first half of his career was at the tail end of Hollywood’s Studio Era.  As a result, he played the pretty boy leads in lots of mediocre action movies.  He and first wife Janet Leigh (parents of Jamie Lee Curtis) made up one of Hollywood’s most glamorous couples ever.

But Tony Curtis could act if he got the right role, and he made at least three great movies.  The fact that these movies come from three very different genres (screwball comedy, contemporary drama, sword-and-sandal epic) is a testament to his ability.

Some Like It Hot (1959):  This Billy Wilder masterpiece is my pick for the best comedy of all time.  Seriously – the best comedy ever.  And it still works today.  Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play most of the movie in drag (and Tony is kind of cute).  Curtis must continue the ruse although next to Marilyn Monroe is at her most delectable.  Curtis then dons a yachting cap and does a dead-on Cary Grant impression as the heir to an industrial fortune.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957):  This has Curtis’ most subtly acted role as a Broadway press agent who is completely at the mercy of Burt Lancaster’s sadistically nasty columnist.  Many of us have experienced being vulnerable to the caprice of an extremely mean person – Curtis perfectly captures the dread and humiliation of being in that position.

Spartacus (1960):  Once in a while, a grand epic is a really good movie , and Spartacus qualifies.  Curtis plays a slave who is hit on by Laurence Olivier’s Roman patrician in a scene of BARELY implicit homosexuality.  “Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?”, Olivier leers from the bath.  It was a gutsy scene for a studio actor at the end of the 50s.

Another thing that ticks me off about Wall Street

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There is a modest SPOILER in this post.

After thinking so more about Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (and getting more annoyed), I have updated my first assessment of the movie.

The screenplay keeps raising the issue of moral hazard (whether to bail out people from the consequences of risks that they knew they were taking). Yet, at the end, the two flawed main characters each get exactly what they wanted at the beginning of the film despite making risky or evil choices throughout. The movie’s payoff (things turn out OK no matter how badly or foolishly you behaved) is exactly opposite of the movie’s sermonette.

Pretty lame, Oliver Stone.

"Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."

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That’s a pretty famous football quote, often attributed to Vince Lombardi.  Lombardi did say those words as early as 1959.  But the quote was originated by UCLA football coach Red Sanders in 1950.

It turns out that the famous line was also spoken in a 1953 movie – by John Wayne!  In Trouble Along the Way, Wayne plays a gleefully corrupt football coach who buys players in an attempt to build up the football program overnight at a small Catholic school.

I’ve added Trouble Along the Way to my discussion of football movies in my Best Sports Movies.

John Wayne in Trouble Along the Way

Please don't take your three-year-old to The Town

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You would think that I wouldn’t have to write this.  But, indeed, when I saw The Town, there in my row was a mom and her three-year-old.  What was she thinking?  Was it too much trouble to watch the trailer?  How was she going to explain the armed robberies, abduction, murders, head shattering battery by rifle butt, spraying AK-47s, the two scenes of sexual intercourse and the threatened rape.  Oh, and how about the castration by pistol shot?  And the car torchings – do you really want your three-year old to learn how to set your car on fire?

Now I’m not a prude.  I often criticize movie ratings as too restrictive.  I think that high schoolers can handle more sex than many parents are comfortable with.  I don’t like cartoonish movie violence without consequences, but I often think that even tweens can handle realistic film violence.  I like to challenge kids with films.

But, GOOD GRIEF, show some common sense.  What is a toddler going to gain from an adult-themed movie?  Yikes!

Roger Ebert and At the Movies return to TV

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Well, here’s some grand news – Roger Ebert is bringing back At the Movies as Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies.  The co-hosts will be respected film critics Christy LeMire and Elvis Mitchell.  Ebert himself will appear with the aid of computer-generated speech  in the “Roger’s Office” segment.  The show will also include movie bloggers Kim Morgan (sunsetgun.com) and Omar Moore (popcornreel.com).  Ebert and his wife Chaz have gone back to the show’s roots and are producing the show for public television stations.

Why I already hate Conviction

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It’s common that a movie trailer will turn me off from seeing a film that I suspect is bad. But sometimes a trailer makes me think that it’s a pretty good movie that I don’t want to see, either. That’s the case with Conviction, the story of a young woman whose brother is convicted of murder; over 18 years, she gets her GED, her college and law degrees and begins a legal struggle to clear him and rescue him from Death Row.  It’s an Oscar vehicle for Hilary Swank, who plays the sister, and what appears to be another fine performance by Sam Rockwell, who plays the brother.  It’s based on the true story of one Betty Anne Waters.

The problem for me is that the film looks self righteous, overly earnest and humorless. It’s just too damn inspirational.  Melissa Leo, who can add texture to any performance, apparently has been given a one-note cardboard cut-out role of a close-minded cop.

And here’s a lawyer’s quibble:  You wouldn’t expect somebody right out of night law school to overturn a murder conviction with a well-reasoned appeal – and she doesn’t. Instead, she gets the Innocence Project to test the DNA, which clears the brother (that isn’t a spoiler if you’ve seen the trailer).  Now you don’t need to go to law school to involve the Innocence Project – they get involved on the wishes of the non-lawyer relatives of convicts all the time.  So the 18-year struggle may be extraordinary, but that’s not what gets the brother off.

This trailer reminds me of the one for The Duchess, which featured Keira Knightly adorned in 18th century finery in a spectacular shot with hundreds of candles – and made me want to gag.  No The Duchess for me.

Speaking of trailers, I really enjoy another (even more irreverent) WordPress blog, The Trailer Trashers. Their tag line is “The only critics who dare review movies BEFORE we see them”.  Yes, they review the trailers.  Give them a look see.

Hollywood's Lisbeth Salander

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Rooney Mara

Well, here’s a surprise.  In David Fincher’s upcoming film versions of the Stieg Larsson novels, Lisbeth Salander will be played by…Rooney Mara.   25-year-old Rooney Mara, sister of Kate, will play in Fincher’s The Social Network this October, so he must know something.  She also has a few credits in TV guest slots, plus a Nightmare on Elm Street movie.  She was also in Youth in Revolt, a nice little movie that I saw in January, but I have no memory of Rooney in it.

The entire success of the film trilogy depends on the portrayal of Lisbeth Salander. Is Rooney Mara a good choice?  Right now, I’ll withhold judgement.  It’s important to realize that Noomi Rapace, the actress who has so convincingly played Lisbeth in the Swedish versions, is not naturally a psycho hard ass – she undertook lots of preparation for the role, including six months of kick boxing AND a special diet AND the body piercings to harden herself for the role.

Noomi Rapace not playing Lisbeth Salander
Noomi and son

Don't wait for me to comment on Eat Pray Love

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Don’t wait for me to comment on Eat Pray Love because I absolutely no interest in seeing it.  I am just not in the target audience for this film:  I haven’t read the book, I am not a woman and I don’t care for Julia Roberts.

I don’t hesitate to watch a movie in a genre that I generally don’t like if it seems like one of the year’s best or really good for the genre:  Inception (summer blockbuster), Zombieland (zombies), The Dark Knight and Iron Man (comic book). District 9 (sci fi) and (500) Days of Summer and Away We Go (rom com).

In this case, I have seen the trailer and read the reviews of Eat Pray Love.  Yesterday it had a Metacritic score of 50.  My guess is that the millions of people who enjoyed the book will also enjoy the movie.  God bless.

Speaking of chick flicks, Metacritic has a great new list up:  20 Worst Chick Flicks Since 1990.  (Amazingly, Kate Hudson stars only in one of these 20.)  I’ve already included it on my Other People’s Great Movie Lists.

More At the Movies

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As I said yesterday, the thing that Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert did better than anyone was to evangelize good films with their series At the Movies (which ends this weekend).  They helped create audiences for indie and foreign films that were ignored by the Hollywood promotion machine.  They even had the guts to rate documentaries like Hoop Dreams and Crumb as their picks for the year’s best film.  Without Siskel and Ebert, I would never seen some of the greatest films of the 80s and 90s.

Here are Siskel and Ebert introducing a great indie film, David Mamet’s House of Games.

And a great foreign film (that launched a great film trilogy), Blue.

And the revival of a restored classic film noir, Touch of Evil.

Siskel & Ebert's At the Movies

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At the Movies ends its long run on television this weekend.  The show went through different versions in the last few years, but its greatness was in the two decades of Gene Siskel and Robert Ebert – their concept, their standards and their passion.

On a personal note, I would say that, along with an excellent local art house theater, Siskel & Ebert’s At the Movies helped me develop my passion for film more than any other factor.  In fact, At the Movies’ Sunday evening broadcast was the reason that I got my very first VCR.

The thing that Siskel and Ebert did better than anyone was to evangelize good films that were out of the Hollywood mainstream, bringing attention to and creating audiences for independent film, foreign films, documentaries and to new and indie film makers.  Here’s a great example – Siskel and Ebert’s review of Mike Leigh’s great Secrets and Lies.