Tag Archives: 5/5

#371- Bringing Up Baby

Quick recap: A woman with a pet leopard forces a hapless scientist to fall in love with her. Congrats?

It happens to the best of us

Fun (?) fact: Bringing Up Baby was considered a commercial failure at the time. It was so bad director Howard Hawks was fired from RKO Pictures and Katherine Hepburn was considered ‘box office poison’.

All cats interrupt phone calls, no matter how big or small they are

My thoughts: Bringing Up Baby is the original ‘screwball comedy’ because literally everyone is insane. Howard Hawks, in discussing why the film did so poorly, hypothesized it was because there’s no straight man to calm things down. Everyone, from the constable, to the housekeeper and to the main characters has their own ridiculous personality. Susan, played by Hepburn, exists as pure chaotic energy. She’s the first Manic Pixie Dream Girl! Everything she does sets off consequences (usually negative) to those around her, especially David, whose only fault is that he engaged with her. After that, it was all over. From what I’ve seen, it’s this frenetic pace that also helped turned audiences off. It was too witty, there were too many jokes being thrown around and too many characters who needed the spotlight. I’ve seen all sorts of comedies and this movie was ridiculously fast even for me.

But I still loved it. The main draw for me is the attraction Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn had. They were perfect to play opposite each other. Grant was a seasoned Vaudeville actor so slapstick comedy was nothing new for him, but Hepburn had never done anything quite like this. I think what makes her so successful is that she truly enjoyed herself. You can see how much fun she is having causing all this trouble and seems perfectly at ease in front of the camera. It’s hard not to fall in love with her. I enjoyed all of the acting, really, because in this movie, there was no such thing as over the top. And of course the leopard was just icing on the cake. I was worried he would be used to do tricks and would be seen throughout the whole film, but that wasn’t the case. He’s integral to the plot but he really isn’t shown all that much.

Despite how well Susan and David worked together, their romance made me all sorts of uncomfortable. I know that’s the joke but she really did ruin so much of his life in 24 hours, including the final scene when she destroys his life’s work in a matter of seconds. Still, he tells her that their time spent together was the happiest in his life so far so maybe this will be the beginning of changes for him. One can only hope.

Final review: 5/5

Up next: Beauty and the Beast

Leave a comment

#364- Ikiru

Quick recap: A bureaucrat finds out he has terminal cancer and realizes how much of his life he has wasted.

Fun (?) fact: Similar to Amarcord, I assumed the title was the name of the main character. It is not, however. Ikiru is a Japanese word meaning ‘to live’.

My thoughts: Ikiru is such a downer of a movie ,yet I felt so motivated and inspired by the end of it. Kanji Watanabe, played by Takashi Shimura, is just about the saddest person I have seen in film ever. I felt sorry for him as he sat through his boring desk job but once he got the cancer diagnosis, he just became pitiful.

The best part of the movie for me is that I never knew what direction it would take. There was some humor in the first few scenes that made me wonder if the diagnosis was a mistake and maybe Kanji could just learn a lesson and live for a very long time. And then he meets a man who teaches him how to spend money frivolously as well as a former coworker who shows him how to have a nightlife. At this point I expected Kanji to realize that family was most important or maybe realize that life should be enjoyed daily. But no, nothing of substance ever materializes and I’m left to watch Kanji continue to suffer.

AND THEN KANJI DIES WITH AN HOUR LEFT INTO THE MOVIE

I absolutely wasn’t expecting this. Where was the life lesson? Where was the grieving son who finally reunited with his father? Instead, the wake is attended by a few family members, bureaucrats, and high ranking government officials. Throughout several flashbacks, which I thought were very creatively done, the friends and family members find out that Kanji knew he was dying yet didn’t broadcast it to the world. Instead, he spent his final months helping to transform a sewage dump into a nice little park for kids to play in. As it usually goes, though, his work is mostly ignored until he is dead and everyone is able to come together and realize how good of a person he was.It was such a sweet way to end the movie, knowing that Kanji chose to help however he could and without any expectation of reward. The final scene recounts how he actually died in the park that he helped create. It’s such a beautiful scene to see Kanji swinging on the play set and singing a song about not wasting any moment. The snow is falling all around him, he knows he doesn’t have much time left and he is completely at peace.

Final review: 5/5. I didn’t get into it much but this movie is also beautiful, every single scene.

Up next: Tabu

 

 

Leave a comment

#360- The Young and the Damned

Quick recap: A group of boys from the slums of Mexico City resort to crime in order to survive.

Jaibo’s ill-fitting overalls are all you need to know he is up to no good

Fun (?) fact: The movie was very poorly received when it first came out but after people had a chance to calm down, they realized that it held a lot of truth. The Young and the Damned is now considered one of the greatest Mexican films of all time.

My thoughts: I’ve seemingly been caught in a ‘wayward youths’ movie vortex as of late and it’s hard to tell whether I can escape any time soon. I’ve lucked out up until now because almost all of the films have a glimmer of hope attached, even though most of the movie is very grim. (I’m looking at you, City of God)

The Young and the Damned, as I should’ve gleaned from the title, is a different beast altogether. It lured me in at first, making me think this was just a cute cautionary tale about bad boys who drink and smoke but who are just little scamps in the big picture of things. And actually, that part might be true until the Ultimate Wayward Youth, Jaibo, shows up after breaking out of reform school. The boys immediately take to him as he shows them how to rob a blind man of his money. It’s a cruel scene, but nothing I haven’t seen before. They take it to a new level however when they chase the man and throw stones at him. That’s when I realized no one was playing around. Every actor in the film is believable as a corrupted youth. I was blown away with how complicated they showed their characters to be. As mean as some of the boys are (including a scene where Jaibo straight up murders a kid), it’s very obvious that the director fully believed poverty was to be blamed for all their hard lives.

Pedro, the main character, is about as real a kid as you can get. He tags along with the gang but never really does the bad stuff. He befriends a lost boy and gets him food to eat and he does his best to listen to his mother, even though they both know she can’t really take care of him. He gets caught up with Jaibo, however, and thus starts his downward spiral that ultimately ends in his tragic death. His murder really broke me in a way that is hard to convey because I wasn’t expecting that kind of ending at all. I kept thinking something good would eventually turn up but it didn’t. The final scene of the farmer throwing his body down a hill is so sickening but really hit home the point that Mexico City was in a crisis with poverty at the time.

Final review: 5/5

Up next: Trouble in Paradise

Leave a comment

#357- Goldfinger

Quick recap:   Goldfinger! He’s the guy who loves that gold! Goldfinger! He makes James Bond wear a duck on his head! Goldfinger! There’s actually someone named Pussy Galore!  Goldfinger! Nothing makes sense!

Fun (?) fact: Sean Connery wore a toupee as James Bond since he started going bald at 21

Ewan McGregor and Sean Connery are the only men allowed to wear this.

My thoughts: This is only my second James Bond film, after watching Spectre in 2015 (I KNOW). Now I can compare that first experience to arguably the best of all Bond films, Goldfinger. 

The very first scene is of a duck floating in a bay and I thought a very nice calming moment before all the mayhem. But then Sean Connery as James Bond emerges from the water and it turns out to have been a disguise! What a twist and I’m only 3 minutes into the movie! Let me tell you, it was a rollercoaster from then until the closing credits. Everything was over the top ridiculous, but only in the best possible way. I’m not even going to pretend that the plot made sense to me but I don’t think it matters because we are all in it for Bond. The audience wants him to win even if we don’t quite understand the gravity of the threat. Goldfinger was such an interesting villain because he was so obvious about his love for gold but also he apparently went to great lengths to show off how dastardly he was. I absolutely loved the scene where he gets all the crime bosses from the major cities and shows off his master plan to rob Fort Knox. How much time do you think went into building that room and the very detailed model and then turning it into a gas chamber?? Say what you will, but Goldfinger really cares about those little touches. He’s like the Martha Stewart of villains.

I’ve never been one for hunky guys like Channing Tatum or various Hemsworths and I figured Sean Connery as Bond, James Bond would fall into that category as well. As a progressive woman it annoyed me that he wanted to make out with literally every woman but also, I totally would’ve made out with him on the spot. He’s one of those jerks that just has to smile and it’s all over. I can’t imagine anyone ever coming close to this level of hotness and I can say that as an expert now, having watched a total of two Bond films.

Final review: 5/5

Up next: La Dolce Vita

Leave a comment