Category Archives: Drama

The Paper Chase (1973)

Posted on September 21, 2012 | 7 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: He can’t please Kingsfield.

James Hart (Timothy Bottoms) attends his first year at Harvard Law School and finds himself obsessed with the notoriously stern Professor Charles Kingsfield (John Houseman). His fascination increases after he begins a relationship with Kingsfield’s daughter Susan (Lindsey Wagner). The rest of the story deals with the pressures and demands of being a law student.

This quite possibly is the quintessential movie about college life. Everything is captured in such a real and revealing way that it will very likely send the viewer back to their college days. Despite being nearly forty years old it doesn’t seem dated at all as it touches on many universals that every generation goes through at that age. If anything it is still quite topical. The few dated elements are actually fun to see including the scene in the pre-cellphone days where the students would line up and wait their turn to make a call on the dorm’s one and only pay phone.

The student characters have diverse personalities and seem like young adults one would meet during their college days, or even see on a campus today. It is nice to have a college movie where students are actually studying. In fact these scenes are some of the best moments in the film including Hart’s dealings with difficult people in his study group.

The Hart character is appealing and relatable. I liked how he is multi-faceted and displays elements from both his own era including his counter-culture hairstyle as well as past ones.

Having it filmed on-location and capturing the different seasons of the year makes the viewer feel like they are attending the school year right along with him. I particularly liked the scene shot in the historic Harvard stadium.

The film also makes terrific use of silent moments as there is very little music. Many college movies dwell on the loud and raucous partying, but there is a lot of quiet time as well particularly the first day of class in a large auditorium wondering what the instructor will be like. The opening sequence done underneath the credits showing an empty classroom quietly filling up with students was not only novel, but brilliant.

Houseman deservedly won the Oscar for his portrayal of the crotchety professor. Outside of a small and unaccredited role in Seven Days in May this was technically, at age 71, his film debut. Some may complain that the character is one-dimensional. We are never shown any type of softer side to him and I am sure most films would have thrown some in, but the fact that they don’t do it makes his mystique more interesting. My favorite moment of his is when at the end of the year the students give him a standing ovation while Kinsgfield responds with his trademark scowl before walking out of the room.

The supporting cast of students is terrific and many were making their film debuts. There is Graham Beckel as Hart’s study partner Franklin Ford who looks like a twin of Brad Dourif. There is also Edward Herrmann and James Naughton as Kevin Brooks a man with a photographic memory, but no analytical ability. My favorite though was Craig Richard Nelson as the moody and belligerent Willis Bell.

Blair Brown can also be seen as one of the female students during the classroom scenes. She speaks in a strange accent and I think she was trying too hard to get the Bostonian sound, but I ended up kind of liking it anyways.

The implementation of Kingsfield’s daughter into the story really didn’t work with me. Lindsey Wagner is a competent actress, but the way they meet on a sidewalk seemed too forced and random. It is also beating extreme odds that Hart would by chance get into a relationship with the daughter of a man that is the complete center of his universe and the fact that she turns out to be hip, sexy, and gorgeous even though she is related to a man who is anything but was also a stretch. It would have been interesting had there been a few scenes and dialogue between Kingsfield and Susan, but none is ever shown.

There is a part involving Hart sneaking into the library when it is closed in order to get into a section that houses the notes taken by the professors when they attended the school as students, which I found to be odd. I have never known any college that has done this and talking with others no one else has either. I was still willing to roll with it but found it frustrating that when Hart takes out the notes written by Kingsfield in 1927 that the camera doesn’t focus in on the page to allow the viewer to see it for themselves. Having Hart simply describe what he sees including some doodling that Kingsfield apparently made on the side of the page is not as satisfying.

I had a few problems with the end as well although it was not enough to ruin what is otherwise a great movie. However, there is a scene showing Kingsfield grading his student’s tests by himself even though most tenured professors who teach large classes have graduate assistants do this for them. It may be more cinematically satisfying especially for the general viewer to see Kingsfield doing the grading, but that is not how it actually works.

Also, when Hart receives the grades in the mail he doesn’t bother to open the letter, but instead turns it into a paper airplane and floats it into the ocean. I didn’t understand the motivation of this because during the film Hart spends an enormous amount of time preparing for the test, so I would think anyone who went through that would want to see what they got. If he wants to turn it into a paper airplane afterwards that is fine, but at least see the results. I spoke to a fan of the film who says he interprets this scene to mean that Hart was more interested in learning the subject for his own enjoyment and not concerned with what he got out of it, but if that is the case the film fails to bring that out earlier and instead seems to show the exact opposite.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: October 16, 1973

Runtime: 1Hour 53Minutes

Rated PG

Director: James Bridges

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Classic, College Life, Drama, Movies Based on Novels

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The Big Bounce (1969)

Posted on September 2, 2012 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: She is really crazy.

Based on the Elmore Leonard novel and remade in 2004 as a vehicle for Owen Wilson this version stars Ryan O’Neal as Jack Ryan a Vietnam vet on the run when he has a physical altercation with a player during a baseball game that leaves the other man injured and looking for revenge. He meets up with Ray Ritchie (James Daly) and his mistress/secretary Nancy (Leigh Taylor-Young) who is a bit on the wild side. She convinces Jack to help her rob her boss of a large amount of money that he has hidden away in his safe, but Jack becomes wary as Nancy displays more and more psychotic tendencies.

I enjoyed the film’s jaded sensibilities, but unfortunately it doesn’t do enough with them. There is too much talk without enough action. The plot is thin and unfocused. I spent the entire time wanted the story to get moving, but it really never does until the very end and by then it is too late. The scenes are lengthy and the production has too plodding a pace. I also didn’t like the fact that they discuss the robbery, but never go through with it. Nothing is more frustrating than an already draggy movie having a potentially interesting plot progression only to drop it.

I also couldn’t stand the music which sounded like men from a barbershop quartet and gets overplayed until it becomes annoying. The melody was too soft and mellow and did not fit the edgy tone of the script, or characters. This is the type of film that needed an up-tempo score with hard and fast beat.

For what it is worth Taylor -Young is good. She gets convincingly crazy and has a near epic meltdown at the end. She also has a tantalizing scene involving her swimming nude, which is only topped by another scene showing her standing naked in the middle of graveyard while pretending to be a statue.

O’Neal is okay although I felt some other actors might have been better, but at least he improves as the film progresses. The two stars were married in real-life at the time and I presume the producers cast them in the parts hoping that their chemistry would project onto the screen, but it never does and they ended up divorced four years later.

Van Heflin is great in a supporting role as Sam Mirakian a cynical and detached man who has seen it all. He brings the film some much needed energy. Lee Grant is also terrific and it was a crime that she wasn’t given more screen time. She makes her desperate and emotionally brittle character real and interesting. Cindy Eilbacher is quite adorable as her young daughter Cheryl. Robert Webber also deserves mention as he is amusing playing a man trying to be tough and intimidating, but ending up always looking like a schmuck.

I never saw the remake, but heard from several people that it wasn’t too great either. I dare say the novel is the best of the three and both film versions are worth skipping.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: March 5, 1969

Runtime: 1Hour 42Minutes

Rated R

Director: Alex March

Studio: Warner Brothers/Seven Arts

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 60's Movies, Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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‘Night Mother (1986)

Posted on August 27, 2012 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Please don’t kill yourself.

Jessie Cates (Sissy Spacek) informs her mother Thelma (Anne Bancroft) that she plans on killing herself during the night and her distraught mother spends the rest of the evening trying to convince her not to do it.

It is hard to imagine a more maudlin and static production. The film consists of just two people talking inside a small, isolated house with no cutaways, flashbacks, inventive camera angles, interesting scenery, music, or editing. Louis Malle once did a film entitled My Dinner with Andre that featured two men sitting at a table and filling the film’s entire runtime with one long conversation, but at least there the topics were fascinating while here it is depressing. I was expecting some profound intellectually stimulating talk dealing with the meaning of life much like the one in Igmar Bergman’s classic The Seventh Seal, but instead it is general and banal. Part of the problem is that the Thelma character lacks sophistication and is unable to debate Jessie on any type of deeper level. The result then is a rather rhetorical 95 minute banter revolving around Thelma pleading with Jessie not to do it ‘because she needs here’ while Jessie glibly replying ‘I can if I want to’. The screenplay, written by Marsha Norman, who also penned the play from which it is based, fails to deliver that lyrical, poetic quality of dialogue that most films based on stage plays seem to have.

I kept wondering what the point to this was.  We never seem to get to the bottom of what is bothering Jessie and only seem to skim the emotional surface. The film does not dig deep enough into the human psyche but should’ve as her issues here are rather derivative and typical. Her main complaints is that she suffers from epilepsy, which is now under control through medication, and she has gone through a painful divorce, but there a lot of people with similar problems and worse who are not trying to kill themselves. Most viewers might be disgusted and appalled at Jessie’s selfish nature and the way she callously ignores her mother’s emotional pleas and insists on moving forward with the suicide despite how clearly devastating it will be to her mother. In the end the film will probably leave most people cold and unable to connect to either character.

The one thing that does save the film and even makes it riveting to an extent is the brilliant performances. Although I could’ve done without her southern accent I still found Bancroft to be fantastic and was impressed with the way she hit all the right emotional peaks. Spacek is superb in every facet and I liked that she wore no make-up and her face had a natural and worn look.

Tom Moore’s direction has a few nice touches. I liked the opening shot showing the remoteness of the home and how the rugged western landscape helped accentuate the hard-living of the characters. The music although only played at the beginning at end has an ominous tone to it that effectively hits the mood and theme of the material.

Of course suicides are always an on-going issue and if this film had given some insight into it I would have given it more credit, but it really doesn’t. I was surprised that Aaron Spelling who was usually known for producing shallow, glitzy stuff like the TV-show ‘Dynasty’ was the producer here.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: September 12, 1986

Runtime: 1Hour 35Minutes

Rated: PG-13

Director: Tom Moore

Studio: Universal

Available: VHS, DVD, Netflix streaming

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with a rural setting, Psychological

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The Slender Thread (1965)

Posted on August 26, 2012 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Desperate cry for help.

Inga (Anne Bancroft) is a middle-aged woman who has fallen into despair. She swallows a bottle of barbiturates and then in a last plea for help calls the local suicide hotline. On the other end is college student Alan Newell (Sidney Poitier) who is volunteering his time at the center and ill prepared for such a call. Despite this he manages to build a connection with her and the rest of the film deals with their conversation and Alan’s attempts at finding her location as well as flashbacks showing what brought Inga to such a desperate state.

This film will finally get its much awaited release onto both DVD and Blu-ray on October 16th and I highly recommend checking it out especially for those that can appreciate great film directing. This was Sydney Pollock’s directorial debut and his calculated touch is clearly what makes what could have otherwise just been a talky script into an intriguing visual showcase. The opening sequence showing an aerial shot of sprawling Seattle is excellent and sure to connect with those that live there. Pollock nicely adds some of the city’s unique architecture into the shots giving the fragmented narrative distinction. He also makes full use of the stark black and white photography. One of the most emotional and memorable scenes in the film is when Inga walks along a lonely beach and tries to help a crippled bird, which wouldn’t have been half as effective had it been done in color. Even the small things like watching a phone technician walking through rows and rows of telephone switchboards is captured with a pristine style that makes it intriguing. The pacing and editing is perfect and at no time does the film ever drag despite the fact that it could have done so if it had been put in less competent hands.

Poitier is exceptional in the lead. Initially I was put off with the idea of a 38 year old man still trying to play a college student, but Poitier is completely believable. It was nice seeing him in a role where the race card never came into play. The film cuts back and forth to the dramatic search by the police to find the woman, but in many ways I found Poitier’s banter with Inga and the many different psychological ploys he uses to try to connect with her far more riveting. Bancroft is equally as good and her distraught facial expressions leave an imprint. Steven Hill lends terrific support as her unhappy husband.

In the complaint department I felt that the music at the beginning seemed much too upbeat and jazzy for a film with such a somber subject. The Inga character gets unraveled too easily and quickly and certain viewers may be put off by her selfishness of trying to kill herself and abandoning her young son. The biggest issue though was with the ‘Hollywoodnized’ ending that devolved a bit too much into the cliché. Otherwise this is a sleeper waiting to be discovered.

Twenty-one years later Bancroft again starred in a film dealing with suicide only this time she played the person trying to talk the other one out of it. That film was entitled ‘Night Mother and will be reviewed on Monday.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 23, 1965

Runtime: 1Hour 38Minutes

Rated NR (Not Rated)

Director: Sydney Pollock

Studio: Paramount

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray 

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Drama, Psychological

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Johnny Cool (1963)

Posted on August 12, 2012 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Top of crime world.

                Johnny Cool (Henry Silva) is really Giordano a man who grew to mythical proportions as an outlaw in a small Italian village after killing off some soldiers who tried to rape his mother. His exploits come to the attention of  Colini (Marc Lawrence) who has been exiled to Sicily because of his gangster past. He stages a fake assassination of Giordano in order to kidnap him and train him to go back to the United States and kill off the men that ordered his downfall. Johnny does this, but then becomes even more powerful than Colini was and soon he is both feared and hunted by the crime world.

The film, which was directed by William Asher, is nicely paced. I liked the fast, gripping action, the pounding music, and raw approach. The black and white photography nicely accentuates the gritty subject matter. Although it may seem a bit tame by today’s standards I still found most of it to be intense and uncompromising especially the ending.

Lots and lots of famous faces pop up everywhere, which is fun for a bit, but then takes you out of the story as it seems to become more like ‘spot the star’. Some of the cameos are small and pointless while others are more interesting. Sammy Davis Jr. has a tense scene playing a man with an eye patch who must role a specific number with the dice or be blown away by Johnny’s gun, which is aimed directly at his temple. Joey Bishop is funny as a fast talking used car salesman and his feeble attempts at making a play at the beautiful Dare (Elizabeth Montgomery). John McGiver is equally fun as a perplexed store manager who brings in a woman to his office after finding that she has been writing a lot of bad checks. The exchange he has with her is a perfect example of why sexual innuendos where a lot more interesting and creative back in the old days when the standard didn’t allow them to be as crass and vulgar as they are now. Here the lady states “I can make those bad checks good.” And McGiver responds after eyeing her figure “Yes, I think you can!”

Telly Savalas is wasted. The man is a great character actor especially as a villain. Playing a tough crime boss from Brooklyn is his forte and he could have really gone with it had they given him a bigger part. Marc Lawrence is equally evil as Colini and showing him only in one scene and then disappearing was disappointing. Jim Backus’s appearance was a mistake. A funny, talented man for sure, but I didn’t like that he did his Mr. Magoo laugh several times here as it did not fit the gritty mood.

Henry Silva has proven to be a great villain throughout his career, but in this role it just doesn’t work. His eyes have a weird type of stare that makes it look like he has been drugged. He delivers his lines in a monotone fashion. The character becomes overblown and some may find his use of the karate chop to be a bit cheesy. He kills a man on an escalator amidst a crowded airport and is able to get away. There are several other scenes where he is able to somehow get into a secure area and kill off people without any explanation for how he was able to do it.

Elizabeth Montgomery, who was at the time the wife of the director, is fantastic. She plays a brunette and does well with a multi-faceted character that goes from helpless victim to conniving double-crosser. She is shown in several scenes wearing no make-up and I liked the naturalistic quality. My only quibble is the scene where she gets roughed up by some gangsters, but the only mark left on her is a bruise on a shoulder even though a few bruises, scratches, and cuts on the face would have been not only more believable, but visually more effective.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: October 2, 1963

Runtime: 1Hour 43Minutes

Rated NR (Not Rated)

Director: William Asher

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Netflix streaming

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Posted in 60's Movies, Action/Adventure, Black & White, Drama, Gangster Movies, Movies Based on Novels

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The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

Posted on July 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Experiencing life in Indonesia.

      Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) is a reporter who travels to Indonesia in 1965 just as the government is ready to be toppled. He experiences all the chaos as well as the poverty of the people and apathy from his fellow newsmen. He falls in love with a beautiful diplomat Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver) who works with a dwarf photographer named Billy Squires (Linda Hunt in her Academy Award winning performance), and eventually finds himself reluctantly thrust into the middle of the turmoil.

     The film is great at recreating the environment and atmosphere of that period. One gets a very good understanding and feeling at just how poverty stricken and desperate the Indonesian people where. Linda Hunt is unique and memorable as the male dwarf. She also has a great line when a fellow photographer asks her opinion of a picture that he took of a naked woman. He wants to know if she thinks it is art or pornography. Her reply, “If it is out of focus it’s art, if it is in focus it is pornography.” It is also fun to see journeymen supporting actor Michael Murphy playing against type. Usually he is saddled with rather transparent types of roles, but here his character is quite obnoxious.

      It would have been better had the film given the viewers a little bit more of a historical background before it just plopped the characters into a very chaotic and confusing situation. Most people probably have no clue as to the history of Indonesia let alone finding it on a map. It would have also been more interesting had the film been based on real people who really lived through the situation instead of predictable prototypes. A very young Gibson seems a bit overwhelmed with his role. His character seesaws from being boring to exasperating. He gets a huge crush on the Weaver character and chases after her like she is the only thing on his mind and then when she gives him an important piece of information he pounces on it even if it means losing her and their relationship. The pace is hurt by having the film spend too much of its middle section focusing on the romance, which really isn’t all that interesting or diverting. The ending is much too pat for a story that takes place in such a dangerous and complex environment.

      This is a grand idea that becomes too muddled and doesn’t place enough emphasis on the historical background and context. The lead character is boring and the pace is not compelling enough.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: December 17, 1982

Runtime: 1Hour 55Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Peter Weir

Studio: MGM/UA

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Drama, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Australia, Romance

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The Killing Fields (1984)

Posted on July 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: Journalists trapped in Cambodia.

This is an excellent fact based drama of Cambodian photo-journalist and English interpreter Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor) who gets swept up in the Khmer Rouge revolution of the 1970’s and forced to survive for four years in their harsh work camps of ‘year zero’.

This film is intense, compelling, and uncompromising. The story stays very close to the true account and it is recreated with a believable atmosphere. Mike Oldfield’s unique music score is fabulous. The music that is played during the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy is one of the creepiest sounding scores that I have ever heard and it is quite effective. Oscar winner Ngor is good in the lead role and creates a tremendous amount of sympathy from the viewer and the ending still has a major emotional impact. Yet the most lasting images of the film are from the children. During one of the battle scenes a close-up of a child is shown holding his ears and crying while another scene has a screaming child in a hospital who is having shrapnel taken out of her spine. This is then correlated with the work camp scenes where the children are protrayed to be the most brainwashed by the party line and become the biggest instigators and purveyors to the torture and mayhem making it even more disturbing. In the end this film makes you ponder and feel the ugly depths of this very bleak and historical event.

On the negative side I felt it could have used some voice-over narration to help connect the scenes especially at the beginning. Some subtitles would have also been helpful during the scenes where none of the characters speak any English. The Sydney Schanberg character, played by Sam Waterston, seems at times to be quite obnoxious. He acts like being a journalist should somehow entitle him to everything and make him above everyone else. Also during scenes when he is photographing and covering the war ravaged victims he is more concerned with getting a nice graphic picture so it will sell more copy then he does with the actual suffering of the victim.

Overall this an extremely powerful and well-staged account of a horrific event that should not be forgotten, but unfortunately probably has for a lot of people.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: November 2, 1984

Runtime: 2Hours 21Minutes

Rated R

Director: Roland Joffe

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: VHS, DVD (Region 1 and 2), Amazon Instant Video

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Hail, Hero! (1969)

Posted on June 24, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Michael Douglas film debut.

Okay all you Michael Douglas fans out there, you know him, you love him, and you’ve seen all his movies, but what was his film debut?  I say this because I have known other fans of stars who are a bit vague when asked about early films of their favorite actors. I remember one lady who was in her 20’s, who I knew from work and professed to be a ‘huge’ Jack Nicholson fan, but when I asked her about some of his early films, which I had enjoyed including Five Easy Pieces, and King of the Marvin Gardens, she drew a complete blank. In fact she was not aware of any of the movies he did before The Shining. I had a similar experience with another lady friend I knew from a different job who professed to be a big Goldie Hawn fan and yet had no idea what film she had won the Academy Award for, which was in 1969 for Cactus Flower a movie that she hadn’t even heard of.  So I was curious how many Michael Douglas fans are actually aware of some of his early work. In fact this film, which was his first, was released when his future wife Catherine Zeta-Jones was only 11 days old.

It is the story of Carl Dixon (Douglas) who is an idealistic, peaceful young man that joins the army simply to please his conservative father (Arthur Kennedy). The film is a pleasant, even touching look at a someone learning to face the difficult and complex issues of adult life and realizing there are no easy answers. The movie doesn’t try to make any type of statement while carefully examining both sides of the issue. There isn’t any ‘bad guy’ here. The characters are real and multi-dimensional. The conversations and debates that they have are ones that went on in many households across the country at that time.

Douglas looks expectedly younger and initially I didn’t even recognize him. His hair is long, at least initially until his father cuts it, and his eyebrows are bushy and his voice much higher pitched. His performance is excellent and the  character his likable and engaging especially with the way he treats everyone with respect and is so generous that he gives his entire suitcase of clothes to a poor family in need.

Kennedy is perfect as the old-school father and my only complaint here is that I wished he had been in more scenes. Theresa Wright, as Carl’s mother, is okay, but she is not given enough screen-time either. She is also caught having an affair, but the film does not delve enough into this, but should have. Louise Latham is terrific giving one of the best performances of her career as a hermit-like woman living alone in a cave alongside the skeletal remains of an Indian baby.

There are some good scenes including Carl’s visit to a senior home where he comes face-to-face with the difficulties of aging as well as when he finds himself ready to strike someone at a party whom he does not agree with and realizing that violent tendencies lurk within anyone even those purporting to be pacifists. Yet the film fails to leave any lasting impression. The ending is weak and the story does not progress enough. The viewer is left feeling almost cheated because we are never shown how these characters evolved. In my opinion the material was insufficient for a feature film.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: October 4, 1969

Runtime: 1Hour 40Minutes

Rated M

Director: David Miller

Studio: National General Pictures

Available: VHS

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Posted in 60's Movies, Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Obscure Movies

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Two for the Road (1967)

Posted on June 3, 2012 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Couple examines their marriage.

This is a unique and diverting look at a couple (Albert Finney, Audrey Hepburn) traveling the French countryside while dissecting their turbulent marriage. The road of course represents their long and winding relationship. It cleverly cuts between when they first met, which seems to have been on the same road, to twelve years later. The edits between the two stages are creative as is the majority of this fluid and entertaining movie. It wants to be silly, fluffy, serious, complex, exotic, avant-garde, and romantic all at once and most of the time it succeeds proving what an over looked, unsung genius director Stanley Donen is.

It’s a movie made for couples, but probably those who have been married for quite a while and can relate to the characters here who have been through the rough spots and have learned to accept their partner and the flaws that come with them. This film tries to dig a little bit deeper, which helps it stand out. It also has a more relaxed European attitude, especially in regards to ‘indiscretions’.

On the negative side the film contains a lot of old fashioned sexist attitudes. For instance the man is expected to be mechanically inclined and in control of every situation, which becomes very apparent in the scene where he has to get underneath the car to fix it while she sits on top of the vehicle without any care or inclination to what he is going through. The man is also expected to be the sole provider of the family while the woman does the majority of the child rearing.

Audrey, who wears an amazingly high number of stylish, chic outfits, looks more like a runway model sporting the latest fashions than an average housewife on a country drive. I realize that they wanted to accentuate her beauty, but it ends up being a distraction at the same time. If the intention of the story is about an average couple going through average marital problems then at least have them look the part.

The Henry Mancini score is pleasant as usual, but eventually gets overplayed. It’s also not as introspective as it wants you to believe, but on a slickness level it gets an “A”. Also, watch for Little Ruthie who is the world’s most obnoxious child.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: April 27, 1967

Runtime: 1Hour 51Minutes

Rated NR (Not Rated)

Director: Stanley Donen

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD

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Posted in 60's Movies, British Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Moody/Stylish, Road Movies, Romance

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The Offence (1972)

Posted on May 25, 2012 | 4 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Interrogate the child molestor.

Well respected, longtime police detective Johnson (Sean Connery) becomes so burned-out by all the sickening crimes that he has seen through his career that he snaps during the interrogation of a suspected child molester (Ian Bannen) and ends up beating the man to death.

Based on the stage play by John Hopkins this film has lots and lots of talking and some may say there is too much of it. The script is split into three drawn out conversations between two people. One is between Johnson and the suspect, the second is between Johnson and his wife (Vivien Merchant), and the third is between Johnson and the man brought in to investigate the incident, which is played by Trevor Howard. By the end even the most patient viewer may feel a bit talked out and it gets especially trying when you realize that the same issues are being discussed over and over again.

Yet that is not to say that this is a poor film as the visual element is excellent. In many ways you can appreciate the production for its visual style alone. Director Sidney Lumet displays a good handle on the material and it’s technically sharp on all levels. The lighting is well composed with the center that is bright, but the corners that are shadowy much like the human psyche and society. The overall grayness helps bring out the depression and isolation of the main character. The pacing is slow, but deliberate. Each scene builds to an intense crescendo. The music soundtrack resembles that of a one tone alarm that keeps building to a higher pitch much like the alarm ready to go off in Johnson’s head. The character’s inner tension is made even more vivid by Lumet’s use of interposing the bright light of the interrogation room over the screen. It is hard to imagine this film being any better crafted and it is a terrific training tool for the inspiring filmmaker.

Despite being talky the script in itself isn’t bad as it makes you aware of the ugly side of police work. It focuses not on the system or corruption, like a lot of other police films, but more on the actual work itself. It questions whether someone who is bombarded with the daily gore and societal sickness can remain sane and whether ‘leaving it all at the office’ is even possible. Every officer may eventually suffer scars from his job experience.

In a way this may be Connery’s best role. He shows his usual tough exterior, but also has moments where he unravels into a helpless, scared man. Bannen does an equally good job as the suspect. You are never really sure if he is guilty or not. The fact that he gives off a leering grin even after being beaten gives this film an added edge.

This is an oppressive and unrelenting movie filled with stark and unpleasant imagery that may stay with you long after it is over. Yet it is also expertly crafted and brings up some serious and important issues that are as timely today as they were back then.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: January 11, 1972

Runtime: 1Hour 52Minutes

Rated R (Mature Theme)

Director: Sidney Lumet

Studio: MGM

Available: VHS, DVD (Region 1 and 2), Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Stageplays, Psychological

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