THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1938: thanks for nothing except Thanks For the Memory

To dismiss THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1938 as an insubstantial piece of fluff is to malign those films which are lighter than air and devoid of meaning or reason for existing.

I find it hard to believe that this film even looked good on paper.
Essentially it's a cinematic version of a vaudeville show with a young(ish) Bob Hope (making his feature length movie debut) filling in the gaps between the acts by pretending to be a radio announcer hosting the world's most implausible broadcast. I appreciate that radio was still a relatively new medium in 1938 but I can't imagine anyone in the audience was sufficiently baffled by the technology to believe that this is how a radio show was put together. 
The premise is that Hope (as Buzz Fielding) is hosting a special radio show from on board the luxury ocean liner SS Gigantic which is racing its rival, the SS Colossal, across the Atlantic from New York to Cherbourg. His efforts are hampered by the presence of his three ex-wives, his fiancee Dorothy (Dorothy Lamour), SB Bellows (WC Fields) the eccentric brother of the Gigantic's owner, and Bellows accident-prone daughter Martha (Martha Raye).
The more I see of WC Fields on screen the more puzzling his success becomes. He's largely incomprehensible here, and much of his act (involving a bent snooker cue) is so old it had whiskers even in 1938. He behaves as if he's in another film entirely, and the overall perception is of selfish self-indulgence. Fields does what he wants to do and to hell with the rest of the cast who've got to work with him.
Funnier by far than Fields or Hope is second billed Martha Raye who uses her somewhat unusual looks to her advantage here. Not only is her character accident prone but she's ugly. She has a face that  literally shatters mirrors, a mouth as wide as the Lincoln Tunnel, and a voice as loud as a fog horn. She's neither dainty nor shy and retiring and is decidedly asexual and director Mitchell Leisen takes full advantage of her 'game for anything' attitude. In one incredibly energetic and acrobatic song and dance number she is thrown, spun around and dropped like a sack of potatoes by a troupe of dancing sailors, singing all the while. It's worth watching the sequence on frame by frame advance just to see if she actually injures herself at any point while being hurled around the set.
The other acts are decidedly more genteel. Kirsten Flagstad from the Metropolitan Opera Company belts out Wagner's most famous aria, while Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm Orchestra accompany an animated sequence involving a dancing splash of water which is considerably less entertaining than it may sound.
Despite the decided averageness of the entertainment on offer THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1938 has earned a small place in movie history as the vehicle which launched Hope's future theme song 'Thanks for the Memory' and he sings it beautifully, duetting with Shirley Ross in a performance impressively devoid of showbusiness schmaltz or over-singing. This routine alone is worth the price of admission and, with a little concentration and selectivity, it could be the only thing you remember this film for.

50/50: a very dishonest comedy about cancer

It's possible to find humour in almost anything although, as a recent episode of 'Family Guy' demonstrated, it can be challenging when the subject is something as sensitive as domestic violence.
The same goes for life threatening illnesses like cancer.
As anyone knows who's suffered from it or had friends or family with it, there's precious few laughs to be had in dealing with a disease which can debilitate, disfigure and kill. All of which makes 50/50 a gutsy proposition.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in this black comedy as Adam, a 27 year old radio journalist diagnosed with a rare and potentially lethal form of cancer in his spine. Seth Rogen is Kyle, his immature, foul-mouthed best friend. Kyle is convinced that cancer is a chick-magnet and persuades Adam to shave his head to better play the part of a terminally ill young man looking for a little female sympathy and company in the bars and nightclubs of Seattle.
Everyone has their own way of handling to life-changing situations and there is no right or wrong way to respond to a diagnosis of cancer.But as someone with a close friend currently battling a very serious cancer what irked me about 50/50 is it's dishonesty in its portrayal of the situation. It treats cancer as something that's barely more serious than a broken bone, and is no more of an inconvenience to the pursuit of daily life than an arm or leg in a cast.
Sure, Adam is shown vomiting after his first chemo session, and he finds himself too tired to stay out all night with Kyle chasing women, but beyond that the film doesn't so much gloss over as completely ignore the other side effects of the disease and its treatment. He shaves his head before his hair starts to fall out but at no point does he look like someone whose body is under relentless attack from within. There's no weight loss or any of the other indignities the disease can visit on the human body.
And don't get me started on the finances! Adam is employed by Seattle's NPR radio station but he appears only to be working on one short documentary feature which has no deadline, giving him buckets of time to hang out with Kyle and visit the hospital for treatment. At no point is the ugly subject raised of how he's going to pay for all this healthcare, while also covering the rent/mortgage on his very attractive house and all the other costs associated with life, like food. In return for minimal working hours Adam is apparently in receipt of America's most generous health insurance benefits. No wonder NPR is forced to run so many fundraising drives every year! Cancer may be ravaging his body but in this version of the United States it leaves his bank account and life savings untouched.
While 50/50 is to be commended for its kid-gloves free approach to the issue of cancer and, in particular the delicate subject of how to relate to the person with the cancer, it's a great shame that it has to sacrifice so much of the reality of the situation in the process. The absence of schmaltzy sentimentality is refreshing (although the ending makes a disappointingly predictable foray into this sugary territory) but the selective portrayal of the subject matter is insulting.

SUSPICION: gutsy Grant deserved a golden gong

Joan Fontaine won an Oscar for her performance in SUSPICION but it's Cary Grant who deserved it.

I'm not saying Fontaine was undeserving but Grant is just magnificent in this Alfred Hitchcock thriller, playing Johnnie, a charming but incredibly suspicious gentleman who seduces and marries the young and impressionable Lina, played by Fontaine.
Hitchcock reveals Johnnie's true character piece by piece, like peeling the layers from an onion, and the more Lina discovers the more she feels like crying.
There's clearly something not quite right about him on their first meeting in a railway carriage. He's prissy, effete and childish yet Lina, who's supposedly smart and intelligent (and reading a book on child psychology) is intrigued by him and secretly overjoyed when he contrives an opportunity to call on her a few days later.
Despite a growing number of warning signs she lets him sweep her off her feet and in no time at all they're married, which is when she starts discovering that almost nothing she'd assumed about him is true.
What so impressed me about Grant is that he's playing aggressively against type. Sure he'd played smooth talking charmers before - that was his screen persona - but never with the disturbing undercurrent of evil on show here. 1930s and 40s Hollywood was built on the premise that its stars always portrayed a type and never strayed from it, so this was a gutsy thing for Grant to do and I understand RKO were very uncomfortable about it. Often when stars stepped away from their type (Gable in 'Parnell', Bogart in 'The Return of Dr X' or 'Virginia City') it was a disaster because the public didn't want to see them playing a different kind of character, but Grant is effective because he takes his screen persona and subverts it, suggesting there's something very rotten beneath that smooth veneer.
It's genuinely disturbing to watch a character we think we know so well gradually reveal the darkness behind the handsome mask, and Fontaine does a great job in expressing the creeping fear that comes with this realisation.
By 1941 Hitchcock was already a master at ratcheting up the tension turn by turn, and interspersing it with moments of frivolity (provided here by a wonderfully nincompoopish Nigel Bruce) which just add to the stress levels rather than alleviating them. SUSPICION builds beautifully to what should be a spectacular climax but isn't because of RKO's jitters over messing with Grant's image. The blame for the ludicrous denouement lies squarely with the studio, not Grant or Hitchcock.
The result is an enormous let down and a load of unanswered questions, but this climactic disappoint can't detract from Grant's masterful performance. He's so good I actually didn't mind the cop-out conclusion (too much).

BREEZY: when Frank was 55 it was a very good year

It's a bit of a mystery why Clint Eastwood chose BREEZY as his third film as director.
He'd made an impressive debut behind the camera two years earlier with 'Play Misty For Me' and followed that with 'High Plains Drifter' in 1973. Then came BREEZY.

Where the first two films are stylish, memorable and clearly the product of a director with talent, BREEZY is bland and anonymous. If it wasn't for some nudity on the part of co-star Kay Lenz, the film could easily pass for yet another in the seemingly endless torrent of made-for-tv movies churned out by US television in the 1970s which offered safe harbour to faded film stars.
In this case it's William Holden, playing Frank Harmon, a middle-aged LA real estate agent living a self-imposed lonely life in a funky (in a 70s kind of way) glass walled house buried at the end of a dead end street in the Hollywood Hills.
When we first meet him he's bidding an awkward goodbye to a one-night stand and fending off her not so subtle hints for a sign of commitment. He's been burned by a costly and bitter divorce and has no interest in getting involved with anyone else.
By this point the film's already introduced us to the title character played by Lenz. BREEZY is a 19 year old free spirit filled with naive notions of love and peace, and newly arrived in Los Angeles with nothing more than the clothes on her back and a guitar slung over her shoulder. BREEZY is also saying (a much less awkward) goodbye to a young man with whom she's spent the night. It's Eastwood's not so subtle way of telling us that despite the age and socio-economic gap between these two characters they're really not so different.
But of course Frank and BREEZY haven't seen the film so things are far from smooth when they first meet after she invites herself into his house. He rightly surmises she's looking for a handout but her childish innocence and expressions of genuine affection for him are soon starting to crack the crusty old codger's heart, and before long they're locked in an embrace.
Eastwood has nothing new to say about the May - December romance story that unfolds, but he covers familiar ground competently enough and there's a certain pleasure to be had watching former matinee idol Holden play the kind of part that would have been a total no-no for a Hollywood leading man less than 20 years earlier. Frank gets totally hung-up on the age difference, and Eastwood emphasizes it with several very unflattering shots which pick out every line and crag on Holden's well-worn face. I wonder if he ever imagined, 23 years earlier while playing the handsome, desirable young buck lusted after by a grotesque and aging former film star in 'Sunset Boulevard' that one day his career would bring him full circle and he'd be playing the Norma Desmond role.
The counter-culture aspect of the story is now terribly dated and I'm not convinced Eastwood's depiction of hippies was particularly accurate even in 1973. BREEZY herself is little more than a collection of flower child cliches that are more grating than endearing, and it's interesting to speculate on just how long she and Frank would last as a couple before the novelty of her youth and sweetness wore off leaving just an annoying, needy woman-child behind.
Despite the flaws I can't bring myself to dislike this film. With a lesser star than Holden this could have been a rather tedious trudge through tiresomely familiar territory, but his world weary charm and talent won me over and kept me watching. And heck, he even had me hoping for the predictable happy ending!

CARJACKED: to car wreck by story's end

It's almost mind boggling.
The opening titles for CARJACKED credit no less than six production companies and eighteen (yes 18!) producers yet not one of them noticed that the final third of the film is absolute nonsense.
Not the kind of nonsense that only a veteran film reviewer with a pedantic eye would notice. I'm talking the kind of nonsense that is so blatant, so ridiculous, so... so.. so nonsensical that it will have you literally shouting at the screen.

Which is kind of a shame because up until this final third CARJACKED was squaring up to be a pretty reasonable thriller in a direct-to-video kind of way.
Maria Bello stars as Lorraine, a harrassed and impoverished single mom, who is carjacked when she stops at a gas station with her young son Chad. Stephen Dorff is Roy, the roguishly charming and violent bank robber who orders Lorraine to drive several hundred miles through the night to a rendezvous with a confederate. A cat and mouse gave develops inside the claustrophobic confines of the car with Lorraine looking for any opportunity to get herself and Chad to safety.
There's nothing particularly original here - of course there has to be a moment when she talks to a police officer searching for Roy but can't tell him what's happening - but Bello and Dorff are experienced and talented enough to create a believable relationship out of a script which is average at best.
But they are powerless to salvage anything resembling credibility from the grand climax with a twist which sees Lorraine transformed into a halfwitted Thelma and Louise and Roy into a stereotypical crazed bad guy who's lost all his marbles. Logic and commonsense are thrown out of the window in favour of a sequence of scenes which will have you banging the palm of your hand repeatedly against your forehand in frustration and disbelief and yelling "call the police, lady, for cripes sake just call the police!." The final pay-off scene is so bad I'm convinced it must have been written by a home-schooled 10 year old raised on a diet of Lifetime Channel made-for-tv movies.
You'll come to be entertained and stay to be disappointed. Or just turn it off after 65 minutes and save yourself from a headache and a sore throat.

SARAH'S KEY: the horror and the beauty

SARAH'S KEY is a terrible, beautiful and heartwrenching story of inhumanity, survival and remarkable kindness which will stay with you long after you've finished watching it.
Set in and around Paris both in the early years of the 21st century and during the French capital's darkest days in 1942, this is also a mystery story which'll keep you on the edge of your seat.
Kristin Scott Thomas stars as Julia Jarmond, a journalist working on an investigative piece about one of the most shameful episodes of French collaboration with the Nazis, the infamous Vel d'Hiv round-up of thousands of Parisian Jews by French police in July 1942. After days held in the most inhumane conditions in an overcrowded sports stadium most of the men, women and children arrested were herded onto trains owned by the French state railway company and sent to their deaths at Auschwitz.
Julia's personal and professional lives intersect when she discovers that the apartment owned by her husband's parents used to belong to a Jewish family, the Starzynskis, who were among the thousands detained in the July 1942 round-up. As she delves deeper into their story she finds that there's no record of the deaths of the two Starzynki children - Sarah and Michel - and determines to track them down so she can tell their story.
As the lynchpin of a complex and emotive story Scott Thomas is magnificent. Understated, matter of fact and relentlessly determined, she holds the past and present together as the film hopscotches between her investigation and the re-telling of the events her investigations uncover. Her refusal to succumb to cheap sentimentality or tearful theatrics as the full horror of July 1942 is slowly revealed to her, gives the story a dignity the Starzynskis and their fellow victims deserve.
Equally impressive is young Melusine Meyance as 10 year old Sarah, giving a performance that is wise beyond her years. There's not a single false note in her response to the unimaginable terror of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment in an overcrowded stadium without food or water and the witnessing of the brutality of the French police towards their fellow countrymen.Nor is she ever less than 100% convincing in her unshakeable determination to survive despite the overwhelming odds.
Heartbreaking and emotionally wrenching are descriptors often overused when applied to dramas of personal bravery in the face of incredibly adversity but they are entirely appropriate in the case of SARAH'S KEY. Director Gilles Paquet-Brenner paints a portrait of people at their best and their worst and forces us to ask ourselves how we would react if we were in Sarah's situation, or one of the non-Jewish French witnesses to the round-up.
SARAH'S KEY also reminded me how much I like French films. They have a style and a sensibility that is so different from American cinema, and while I'm not trying to argue that one is better than the other I do think it's refreshing from time to time to look at life from another angle.

OUR IDIOT BROTHER: the tale of an unmotivated Forest Gump

Bring back capital punishment! (for those of you reading this in a territory where it no longer exists).
For all other places, this film is the best argument I've yet seen for keeping it.
OUR IDIOT BROTHER does not deserve to live.

I'm struggling to remember the last time I watched a film that was such a complete and utter waste of space. There is no argument that can be put forward to justify the continued existence of this pathetic wretch. It is totally without worth.
Director Jesse Peretz ('The Ex') has created a shapeless, sprawling, meandering story which wanders around with very little sense of direction but an unfortunate and burning passion for cliches.
A shaggy haired, heavily bearded Paul Rudd is Ned, the titular idiot brother and Beach Boy Brian Wilson look-a-like, while Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks and Emily Mortimer are his long suffering sisters. After a spell in prison for selling marijuana to a uniformed police officer Ned goes to stay with each of them and - through his stupidity - succeeds in wreaking havoc in their jobs and relationships.
Which is where the cliches come in. There is nothing original about what Ned does or the lessons that everyone learns from their interactions with him. Ned's unfortunate siblings and their spouses/partners see him as an idiot but director Peretz desperately wants us to believe there's a native intelligence guiding this man-child's actions. His chosen method of persuasion is to have Rudd play Ned as a character who is neither completely idiotic nor a total man-child. This is achieved not by a careful blending of both traits but by having Rudd play some scenes as an idiot, others as a man-child and yet others as a reasonably normal person.
The result is a completely inconsistent and implausible character who switches at random between the different forms of behaviour depending on the requirements of the particular scene, and the end product is a viewer as exasperated as Ned's siblings.
The take away from all of this is that it's better to go through life as an idiot than to attempt to achieve something with your life. Sure Ned's sisters are making a hash of it but at least they're trying whereas he's content to not only sponge off them but inflict uninvited life lessons on them by interfering in their lives. While they're left to pick up the pieces (and, of course become better people because of Ned's intervention) he blunders on, seemingly unaware that he's on a road to nowhere.
And that is exactly where this film goes - nowhere.

BULLETS OVER BROADWAY: what would Woody have done?

I've got just one problem with this Woody Allen comedy about a struggling playwright in 1920s New York who's forced to cast a gangster's talentless girlfriend in his latest production to get it produced.
Woody's not in it.

He wrote it and directed it but chose to cast John Cusack in the part of playwright David Shayne even though it's clearly written for him.
How do I know that?
Because Cusack's performance is not so much an interpretation of the part as it is a very obvious impression of Woody Allen playing the part.
And therein lies the problem.
When a character is so blatantly written to be played by one particular actor I want to see that actor in the part, not another actor playing it exactly like the actor it was intended for. It's so frustrating when Allen is standing there, just a couple of feet away behind the camera. He could just have walked out onto the set and taken over, for cripes sake!
Cusack does a great impression of Allen but he's too young to be convincing as Allen.Conversely Allen is too old to play the part as written. A struggling 60 year old playwright seems a little unusual - surely anyone with half a brain would have given up the struggle well before reaching the three score mark. The character of Shayne would have to have been re-imagined for Allen to have played him.
But I would rather have had that than Cusack's impression. Because it is so patently Allen, Shayne doesn't ring true as a character. And that kind of drags down the entire film.
Well maybe not entirely. On the plus side, there's impressive performances from Dianne Wiest, in an Oscar winning turn as a Broadway grand dame who's seen better days, and Rob Reiner as a pretentious fellow playwright who prefers to cling to his principles than write a hit play and trades philosophical barbs with Shayne even as he's stealing his girlfriend.
By no means is BULLETS OVER BROADWAY a disaster but it could have been so much better with Woody in front of the camera as well as behind it.

IT COULDN'T HAPPEN HERE: but it did and there's nothing we can do to change that

It's never made entirely clear what the 'it' is that couldn't happen here. Unless they're referring to the excruciatingly awful over-acting, storyline that's pure gibberish and nonsensical visuals.

In which case it most certainly could and unfortunately does happen here.
This 1988 vanity project by The Pet Shop Boys indulges their artistic pretensions to the detriment of everyone involved. Neil Tennant drifts through scene after ridiculous scene like a 'Another Country' period Rupert Everett wannabe while Chris Lowe trots along beside him like an obedient lapdog perfecting the distant stare which was the fate of so many 1980s era band musicians who were contractually required to appear in their group's videos but weren't given  anything to do.
The duo's weak acting skills and Tennant's unconvincing delivery of dialogue can just about be excused - they're musicians after all, not actors, and they should have stuck to the former - but the professional thespians in the cast really should be ashamed of themselves. Gareth Hunt and Joss Ackland compete for the hammiest over-acting honours with Barbara Windsor nipping at their heels. I appreciate that actors like to work and need to earn income but really, do you have no pride at all in your craft and your reputation?
The story such as it is appears to have something to do with fragmentary memories of Tennant and Lowe's childhood set to a random collection of Pet Shop Boys tunes few of which have anything to do with the visuals. Director Jack Bond does make a half-hearted effort to associate some of the songs with the on-screen action but with others he just gives up and wheels out a dance troupe to perform routines which evoke only memories of Legs & Co from Top of the Pops rather than 1960s England.
Not only do Tennant and Lowe come across as a couple of art school poseurs but the film diminishes them as musicians with its inept and random presentation of their hits, and an over-reliance on the album tracks that weren't singles precisely because they're so tuneless and/or unmemorable. Using one of these rather than a hit to open the film was a big mistake because it immediately deflates expectations.
The Pet Shop Boys made some great music and that is what they should have stuck with. Trying to spin an 80 minute semi-surrealistic art-house film out of a 4 minute image (the average length of one of their singles) was a really bad idea which does them no favours and inflicts cinematic grievous bodily harm on the audience.

THE GROOVE TUBE: you had to be there

With the benefit of hindsight it's tempting to see THE GROOVE TUBE as an inspiration for 'Saturday Night Live.' Released just a year before the now legendary tv show made its debut, this film is also a collection of unrelated sketches and spoofs most of which aren't funny and several of which feature a young Chevy Chase.
Writer-director-star Ken Shapiro is a forgotten name today but judging by his ubiquity here he must have been enough of a rising talent in the mid 70s for someone to consider it worth their while to bankroll this personal vanity project.
A ramshackle attempt to send up 1970s American tv, this assemblage of skits targets everything from crime dramas to cookery shows to the evening news, with a smattering of nudity thrown in, but mostly misses. The most labored sequence - featuring Shapiro and a young Richard Belzer as a couple of hopeless drug dealers - is also the longest, outstaying its welcome by several painful minutes.

But just like SNL there are a few laughs to be had too. My favorites are a demonstration on how to bake a 'July 4th Heritage Cake' and the final musical number featuring Shapiro as 'Dancing Man' and proving that whatever his comedic shortcomings he certainly understood how to move his slightly podgy body to maximum comic effect.
The aforementioned Chevy Chase gives no indication of the comedy powerhouse he was to become just a few short years later, and on the basis of this film alone it would be difficult to guess that he would become a star and Shapiro would be the one to sink into obscurity.
Time has not been kind to THE GROOVE TUBE. What was anarchic, edgy comedy in 1974 now appears dated and tame, but the film has value as a history lesson. It reveals at least one of the influences on 'Saturday Night Live' which was in turn to prove so influential on the direction of  development of American comedy over the following 10 - 15 years. Just don't expect to laugh too much.

NO ROOM FOR THE GROOM: no reason to have been made

This leaden attempt at light comedy serves one useful purpose only - to confirm that light comedy was not the forte of director Douglas Sirk.

Thankfully his reputation rests not on this misguided and feeble effort but the series of melodramas ('All That Heaven Allows', 'Magnificent Obsession', 'Written on the Wind', 'The Tarnished Angels') that he made subsequently for Universal in the 1950s. If all we had to go on was NO ROOM FOR THE GROOM he'd be rightfully forgotten.
This 1952 comedy of newly-wed frustration is as tedious as it is predictable and it is tediously predictable. Tony Curtis is Alvah Morrell, a young GI who elopes to Las Vegas with his sweetheart, Lee (Piper Laurie) only to be rushed to hospital with chickenpox on his wedding night. The moment he recovers he's shipped overseas for 10 months so by the time he returns home to his Californian vineyard he's understandable keen to consummate the union. But while he's been away his wife's overbearing and disapproving mother (Spring Byington) has moved an army of annoying relatives into Alvah's home so there's nowhere private for the couple to become reacquainted. And just to add an extra wrinkle Mama doesn't know the pair have tied the knot.
Not only is all this not funny but the plot's advancement relies almost entirely on characters not saying simple things to clear the air or resolve misunderstandings. This device was hackneyed half a century ago and remains one of the most implausible ever employed in any form of storytelling. Asking the audience to believe that a young man who goes off to war and risks his life for his country doesn't have the guts to tell his mother-in-law he's married her daughter defies credulity.
Neither Curtis nor Laurie are skilled enough to breath any life into the stolid script, and Curtis' lack of comic timing is almost shocking given how skilled a comic performance he was to give in 'Some Like it Hot' later in the decade. His desperately misguided attempt to play drunk is particularly excruciating in its awfulness.
The total absence of humour, the cloying coyness of the young couple and the general lack of even a small spark of interest in the plot make NO ROOM FOR THE GROOM one of the longest 82 minutes I've ever sat through. An embarrassment to everyone involved