Romancefest 2017: Indecent Proposal

Yet another in a long line of movies I was aware of but never saw, this fourth film from Adrian Lyne for Romancefest proves to be a little bit of a backslide for him: INDECENT PROPOSAL drops back from the crowd pleasing, Oscar-worthy FATAL ATTRACTION and lands firmly in FLASHDANCE territory.

This is the movie where Robert Redford offers Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore a million bucks for a chance to sleep with Moore. Harrelson and Moore have just lost their life savings in a last ditch effort to win enough money gambling in Vegas to pay for their dreamhouse.

They accept, the whole thing eats away at them, their relationship falls apart, Moore ends up with Redford, but then Harrelson and Moore are drawn back together.

It's strange – the movie focuses mostly on the aftermath of this arrangement. While it's easy for me to believe that this kind of thing would have a big and far-reaching fallout within a married couple, it's less interesting to see how Redford, as a billionaire, continues to court Moore and how Moore goes along with it.

A more interesting film would zero in on the night in question, I think. Maybe even in an isolated environment. For some reason I got the idea in my head a long time ago that this movie took place on a cruise ship, so all 3 of our principals are stuck together, Redford makes his offer, gets a night with Moore, and meanwhile Harrelson is stuck there like a dummy on the same ship, unable to escape. Of course, that's not what happens at all, but I kind of wish it did.

Also, Redford basically turns out to be an okay person, I guess, as far as these things go, and it might have been more interesting to have him turn out to be a total creep. Or have Harrelson turn out to be a total creep. Or Moore. Instead, none of them are. It's hard to find drama among 3 pretty easy-going people.

We kind of have the same problem here as we had with NINE ½ WEEKS – we've got kind of a depraved, kinky, thrilling story but it's told with an attempt to appeal to the middle of the road as much as possible. NINE ½ WEEKS takes a few more risks, in this respect, but they're both afraid to go all out when it comes to following their own premises.

Anyway, it's kind of a bummer way to end ROMANCEFEST 2017, but there you have it.

Romancefest 2017: The Age of Innocence

I saw THE AGE OF INNOCENCE years ago, before I was really in my film buff phase and before I really knew who Martin Scorsese was. So, it was high time I gave it another watch, and what better chance to do so than Romancefest, since it's super romantic.

Based on the novel by Edith Wharton, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE takes place in 19thcentury New York among high society and stars Daniel Day Lewis as a man torn between his fiancé (Winona Ryder) her cousin (Michelle Pfeiffer) who has just returned from Europe to New York to divorce the Count who has taken her money.

Most of Roger Ebert's writing on THE AGE OF INNOCENCE centers on the fact that it's about a society where no one can say what they're really thinking or feeling out loud even though they all project what they're really thinking and feeling through body language or looks. So everyone knows everyone's business but pretends not to, and you kind of enter into society agreeing to play along with those rules. Narration by Joanne Woodward guides the audience through some of this stuff, otherwise we might miss it, since this world is alien to us.

This basically ruins Lewis' life – he makes the wrong decisions at the wrong times and never gets to be with the woman he really wants because he's playing society's games and so is everyone else. The only one who doesn't seem to care is Pfeiffer, but which is what makes her so attractive to Lewis, but she's happy to let Lewis dig his own grave, if he won't grow a backbone and stand up for himself.

Scorsese said this flick was his most violent, which is funny, since there's no on-screen gore. I guess what he meant was it's the most brutal, emotionally speaking, and I think he might be right. At least the characters in his other films, however repressed they might be, get to flip out at some point. Not so in THE AGE OF INNOCENCE – here they're trapped.

Romancefest 2017: Jungle Fever

Did you know JUNGLE FEVER is a pretty tragic drama and not really a comedy? I didn't! Until now. I don't know if it was the marketing or the kickass Stevie Wonder song or what, but I was surprised when I sat down to watch JUNGLE FEVER just how sad it was.

Here we have two movies about affairs back to back – this time around it's Spike Lee directing (and co-starring) with Wesley Snipes, who is  a happy family man until he meets an Italian-American woman at work (Annabella Sciorra) and ends up sleeping with her. The rest of the film details their trials and tribulations when Snipes loses his family, moves in with Sciorra, and both deal with racism re: mixed couples.

Being a Spike Lee flick from the 90s this is not just about white people rejecting a mixed couple. It's also about discrimination between lighter skinned and darker skinned blacks people, black women disapproving of black men dating white women, Sciorra's Italian-American family treating her like a slave, ridiculing her "weak" pre-Snipes boyfriend (John Turturro) and, of course, being racist.

There's also a subplot with Samuel L. Jackson as Snipes' crack-addicted brother and how his addiction leads him to disappoint and take advantage of his otherwise peaceful parents (Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee).

As usual, whether dealing with comedy or drama or both at the same time, Lee takes things to operatic heights, with the help of an overactive Terence Blanchard score. As usual, I admired this – the most recent Lee flick I saw was CHI-RAQ, and that was similarly over the top, divisive among viewers because of it, but that was exactly what I loved about it. If you're gonna go, go for broke.

Romancefest 2017: Fatal Attraction

The third time's the charm for Adrian Lyne this Romancefest with FATAL ATTRACTION, by far the best of his 3 films I viewed this month. I guess it just had the strongest story and that was all that was really missing from Lyne's other efforts. Who knew.

Michael Douglas stars as a legal dude at a big publisher who is happily married and has a kid. He meets one of the editors (Glenn Close) at the publishing company at a company party, his wife (Anne Archer) leaves for the weekend, one thing leads to another and Douglas and Close are knockin' boots.

After their one night stand, Douglas foolishly thinks he can move on with his life but Close has other things in mind. Douglas also foolishly gives in and spends the weekend with her, and THEN thinks he can move on with his life, but Close STILL has other things in mind (attempted suicide).

So, now: Douglas is trapped between wanting to hide the affair from his life in an effort to keep his family together, and having to appease Close, who begins to act increasingly erratic and threatens to expose him if he doesn't do what she wants. He tries everything, including moving to the country, but no dice. Close will not give up and things escalate to animal abuse and kidnapping.

This movie was obviously a big hit but did you know it was nominated for best picture? Well, it was. I liked it, too. Like a good Hitchcock movie, the story deals with something anyone can identify with – a guilty conscience. Like, I'm not saying everyone's an adulterer, I'm just saying everyone's done something once or twice they were afraid might come back and bite them in the ass at some point.

Romancefest 2017: Broadcast News

I started to watch James L. Brooks' film BROADCAST NEWS for a previous Romancefest before deciding to take that year's list in another direction and starting over again. But now I'm back! And it's a good movie.

After a fun opening in which we meet each of the movie's characters as little kids, BROADCAST NEWS settles into a love triangle following an ambitious TV news producer (Holly Hunter) and two reporters: idealistic, intellectual but unpolished Albert Brooks, and well-spoken and handsome but not-so-bright William Hurt. Actually, Hurt IS bright but he just doesn't write his own stories and doesn't know much about current events. And Brooks isn't exactly a schlub, but he is when put up against Hurt.

Aside from dealing with the love triangle, the movie also explores the changing nature of the news media at the time (1987) and the morals and ethics of journalism in general. It's actually a little sad to look back on what this movie considers scandalous, since things have just gotten so much worse. For instance, the idea of a pretty face reading the news, but not writing it or understanding it, is approached as completely foreign to these characters. Meanwhile that's par for the course, now. Also, a crucial plot point hinges on Hurt editing an interview to exploit and somewhat misrepresent the emotions involved in it, and this is a breaking point for Hunter when it would be a normal day at the office for most producers today, I'd imagine.

So, the movie is both ahead of its time and behind the times, as it was smart enough to question all this bullshit but idealistic enough not to realize things were about to become ten billion times worse.

The movie has both a smart and funny script as well as three incredible leads. Hunter is perfect at playing both tough and vulnerable, Brooks, as always, effortlessly does smart and sarcastic, and Hurt has possibly the hardest part of all, as he plays the pretty boy who should be easy to hate, but does it with enough humility and sincerity that you kind of root for him, some times. That's what makes a good triangle: if you pretty much like everyone involved. Even the supporting cast is good with Jack Nicholson as a slimy anchor and Joan Cusack as a devoted assistant.

There's a famous sequence in this film in which Hunter is feeding Hurt lines through an earpiece and the two click on an intimate level as they're able to cobble together a story in real time, live on television. It's a pseudo-sex scene in which the editing, acting and sound design all comes together to put together a symphony of feelings. This is the essence of cinema -- purely visual storytelling, from all departments coming together in collaboration.

Romancefest 2017: Sid and Nancy

It's about time I got around to watching SID AND NANCY. I only walked by the poster in the Hollywood Theatre's bathroom about a thousand times before they took it down.

This is the energetically told, but tragic, tale of real life lovers, Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) and Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb), as directed by Alex Cox. As you may know, this is Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols, the band famous for ushering in an era of punk rock while barely knowing how to play their instruments (even though I think they're full of shit and probably knew how, so there). The Sex Pistols also include Johnny Rotten (Andrew Schofield) who grew up to do a morning radio segment that used to piss me off when I was 12, before showing up on  JUDGE JUDY, perhaps the most punk rock show ever aired in the history of syndication.

Anyway, if you ever feel like not doing heroin, watch this movie. Because it's about how bad heroin sucks. Sid Vicious goes from rock star on top of the world to dead within the span of what seems like not very much time at all. Here's the thing: when the other Sex Pistols are annoyed that you party too much and want to kick you out of the band, you have a problem.

This is a pretty insightful movie about the dangers of a co-dependent relationship, as Sid first becomes attracted to Nancy after feeling sorry for her being shunned by his peers. She's a drugged out groupie when he meets her, and eventually introduces him to heroin and leads him along his path to addiction. But even without the drug, you get the impression the two would be a volatile combination, as they spend their days and nights fighting, arguing, making up, etc. Even if you haven't ever been in the situation where you're sitting up all night waiting for your next fix, you might be able to identify with two lost souls who only have each other to love and berate as they both decline into the hell that is being trapped alone in a room together.

Or, maybe you won't. Maybe it's just me!

The movie begins with Nancy's death, apparently at the hands of Sid, and flashes back to the beginnings of their relationship, and then catches back up with the beginning at the end, so we know going in that this is going to be a tragedy, even if we don't know anything about the Sex Pistols. Again, even if you've never been an addict or a rock star, you might think, there but for the grace of God go I.

Probably the most interesting thing about the film in retrospect is Oldman's performance. If you're used to him as a respected and established actor, it's fun to go back to this early performance and see him as a young force of nature. If this was a nobody you'd assume this was just how the actor is and the director captured it. But we know this guy grew up to be Gary Oldman, so it's clear this is just an insanely good performance. Speaking of good, the direction is great, and it's a wonder Alex Cox didn't go on to bigger things.

Incidentally, I was surprised to notice that it turns out Courtney Love has based her entire life on this film and has been pretending to be Nancy all this time. Go figure.

Romancefest 2017: Nine 1/2 Weeks

Here comes the 2nd Adrian Lyne film of Romancefest, NINE 1/2 WEEKS. Does it make more sense than FLASHDANCE? Sorta. Does it have lots of montages? Yes!

Known for being sexually explicit and for having a lengthy sex-with-food sequence (lampooned in the arguably better film HOT SHOTS!), NINE 1/2 WEEKS stars Kim Basinger as a New York City art dealer who falls in love with a Wall Street guy (Mickey Rourke). Rourke plays mind (and sex) games with Basinger to the point that she starts to lose parts of herself and transform into what basically amounts to a sex slave, coerced into doing things that alternatively humiliate and empower her by Rourke's emotionally manipulative mood swings between intense intimacy and detached coldness.

Sound familiar? Methinks E.L. James of FIFTY SHADES OF GREY fame might have seen this flick.

So, since Lyne directed both FLASHDANCE and this flick, let's use FLASHDANCE as an example to measure this film against. I feel like this movie and FLASHDANCE are kind of opposites. For example, where technicaly wizardry is the strength of FLASHDANCE, it's the weakness here. This movie, perhaps in spite of itself, actually does have characters and story going for it. I'm not sure how much of this is actually from the screenplay and how much of it is from Basinger and Rourke turning in three dimensional performances. Maybe it's both.

In any case, I feel like the real stuff is undercut by the slick Hollywood style of the flick. For instance, there's a sequence in which Basinger and Rourke go for a night on the town with Basinger dressed as a dude. That's fine, whatever. But! They run afoul of some people on the street who take exception to their apparently homosexual tryst, end up on the run, and find themselves in a dark alley with homeless people (or something) and in the middle of a knife fight. After all that, they make mad passionate love in the rain, in the alley, etc. The problem is, it looks like it's shot on a set with perfect lighting. It doesn't look like two people banging in a dirty alley. So it's like, who cares if they get turned on by a knife fight and bang in an alley if the alley looks like the cover of a romance novel. Where's the danger? What's the point?

So, the best stuff in the movie is not visual, it's in the emotions and the minds of the characters. And for the most part, this is fine. Basinger has her shit together enough to tell Rourke to fuck off every now and then, so at least it's not a totally unbelievable relationship. And Rourke hints both that he likes Basinger more than he lets on and that he has some emotional trauma he's dealing with, so he's not just a robot monster.

Still, the way the story's told you have to wonder about a couple sequences. For instance, early on when Basinger and Rourke hardly know each other he takes her to an amusement park and then pays a carny to let Basinger ride the ferris wheel alone and then strand her at the top of the ferris wheel. After that, both the carny and Rourke walk away, leaving Basinger screaming for help and obviously unhappy with the situation. I realize in the context of the movie this is one of Rourke's mind games. But, it's so extreme and so out of nowhere and so early on and Basinger freaks out so much you have to wonder why the relationship even progresses after that. Like, at that point, Rourke's just being a dick. He's not being all charming and mysterious. He's just being a dick.

Still, once you get by that weird scene and roll your eyes at the various montages, there is some interesting stuff going on with the push and pull between Rourke trying to control Basinger and Basinger sometimes giving in and sometimes not. It would have been even more interesting if the movie would have been willing to follow the characters down darker and grittier paths, but it didn't. So instead it's just weird.

Romancefest 2017: My Beautiful Laundrette

I was excited to see Stephen Frear's 1985 film MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE primarily because it stars a young Daniel Day Lewis as a reformed right-wing street punk who also happens to be gay. Also, I already know Frears' work from the great DANGEROUS LIAISONS and HIGH FIDELITY, and have seen this title on many best-of lists, so it was high time I got around to checking it out.

The film stars Gordon Warnecke as a young man of Pakistani descent living in London during the Margaret Thatcher era. His takes care of his father, who was once a successful journalist (Roshan Seth), but has since turned to alcoholism out of despair for the direction England is heading. Warnecke goes to his uncle (Saaed Jaffrey), who is more active in the London Pakistani community, for a job, and ends up tasked with taking over a failing laundromat (laundrette) and trying to make something of it.

Meanwhile, Warnecke is reunited with an old school friend, Daniel Day Lewis, when a group of punks attack him and some of his family members. Warnecke recognizes Lewis among them and offers him a job helping out with the renovations of the laundrette to try to get him out of his shitty circumstances. We also get some clues that the two used to have a romantic relationship back when they were in school together, and that it might start back up again.

This is the second movie in a row for Romancefest where so much of the wealth of the movie comes from the specificity of who the characters are and the environment they live in. If you stripped all of this away, you might still have an interesting story, but it would not be as rich. The layers on top of the simple romance and simple task of running a business are what makes the movie memorable, funny and dramatic. Here you've got a Pakistani man in a homosexual relationship with a British guy, trying to run a business during difficult times for the economy and for the left-wing in general. We don't need any manufactured drama when we've got this kind of stuff going on and that goes a long way towards making the film that much more authentic, and that goes a long way towards making us sympathetic to the central relationship.

Romancefest 2017: Valley Girl

I started to watch VALLEY GIRL a few years ago and got sidetracked and paused the movie to do something else. Now I've finally seen the rest of it for Romancefest, and I'm glad I did, because it's genuinely funny and romantic.

I guess VALLEY GIRL was responsible for most of the 80s, as it exposed the rest of the world to "valley speak" -- like, totally. The movie stars Deborah Foreman as the titular valley girl, and appropriately starts with her and her friends hanging out at the mall. Foreman dumps her "perfect" boyfriend (Michael Bowen) and falls for a punk rocker from Hollywood (Nicolas Cage).

We have kind of a star-crossed situation here because in the world of this movie, the valley kids view Hollywood or actual Los Angeles as shitty, and the valley as awesome. So, Foreman would be downgrading herself to pursue a romance with a dude from over the hill in the city, rather than with a dude from the valley. When I lived down there the valley was considered lame and it was cool to go over the hill to the city, but what do I know.

Apparently this was a low budget production that blew up into an unexpected hit, and I guess that is why the movie seems so fresh and original and specific. If it had been a major studio production from the beginning, it would have likely been homogenized to the point of not really being about any particular set of subcultures. Given the freedom to do what they wanted, the production features a lot of fun Southern California locations, fashions, and character types that many audiences at the time had probably never seen before. Also, the soundtrack is awesome. After hearing "I Melt With You" by Modern English over FM radio waves my entire life it was eye (or ear) opening to hear it on Blu-ray coming out of a digital surround system.

VALLEY GIRL was interesting to see right after FLASHDANCE because they're both from the same year, 1983, and they both, I think, endeavored to be strikingly modern and contemporary. FLASDHANCE took the more generic approach -- the movie rests on its technical credits, rather than striving for any kind of point of view. VALLEY GIRL is the opposite -- it might be a little rough around the edges, production wise, but its value lies in the specificity of the characters: the way they speak, their likes and dislikes, the world they live in, the music they listen to. What a fun movie.

Romancefest 2017: Flashdance

Adrian Lyne's FLASHDANCE is one of those flicks I feel like I've seen but I never really watched. Now that I've "really watched" it, I feel like this is the kind of movie you can never REALLY watch because it's so all over the place it almost doesn't make any sense. Roger Ebert credited the Jerry Bruckheimer product ARMAGEDDON as being the first feature-length trailer but I'd say the Bruckheimer/Don Simpson production FLASHDANCE is probably the first feature-length montage. Some say ROCKY IV holds that honor, but FLASHDANCE was montaging a full 2 years before Rocky ended communism forever.

When FLASHDANCE pauses from montaging for a couple minutes here and there it's about an 18-year-old (Jennifer Beals) who works in a steel mill by day and dances at a bar by night. This is the weirdest bar you'll ever see. It's blue collar and has dancing but the dancing is NOT stripping. Instead, it's this series of increasingly avant-garde performance art pieces. I feel like real steel workers would get pissed at all the shenanigans and goings on and walk out on the performances but instead they love it. I guess I've misjudged them.

Beals is romanced by her boss (Michael Nouri) and hangs out with her co-workers, another dancer who wants to be a figure skater (Sunny Johnson) and a burger flipper who wants to be a comedian (Kyle T. Heffner). She's also besties with an elderly retired dancer (Lilia Skala) who encourages her to try out for the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance and Repertory. Beals dreams of going there but is alternatively scared of rejection and put off by the snootiness of the school.

So, what sucks about this movie? Since it's almost entirely comprised of montages, there's very little in the way of character development. In fact, there's very little in the way of characterization at all. We're left with basically no idea of what kind of person Beals is supposed to be, other than someone who wants to dance. Granted, that could be the driving force and central aspect of someone's life, I'm not arguing that, but the way the movie is cobbled together and written, she seems to be one character one moment and a totally different character the next and we're left wondering what she's thinking.

For instance, towards the beginning of the films he goes to confession and tells the priest she's thought about sex. This comes off as charming and naive and like she's kind of conservative even though she's a maniac on the floor. That's an interesting dynamic. Until she goes on a date with her boss and inexplicably starts erotically eating shellfish before massaging his crotch under the table with her foot. Where'd this come from? You could argue it's to show off in front of her boss's ex-wife, who shows up to rain on everyone's parade, except Beals is already in full-on seductress mode BEFORE the wife shows up. It comes out of nowhere.

Also, montages aren't bad, in and of themselves, but it's strange when they seem to exist in a limbo. For instance, there's a sequence where Beals and her friends go to the gym to work out. Cool, I imagine dancers have to go work out. It's a part of their lives. This makes sense. But there's no surrounding context to the sequence. It's even shot against an empty white backdrop as if they're just working out in some MTV music video completely detached from the rest of the film. What's the deal?

What's good about the movie? Well, Beals is great in it, even though her character makes no sense. Most of the dance sequences are fun to watch. The movie's beautifully shot. And the soundtrack is great. Even though the movie doesn't earn it with characters or story, you still get all emotional when "What a Feeling" comes on the soundtrack, whether it's set to shots of Beals riding her bike around Pittsburgh, or set to her triumphant audition at the dance school.

I guess the problems and the strengths of this movie both arise from the fact that it attempted to perfect cinematic shorthand to the point where the filmmakers expected shortcuts to work for everything, in place of characters and story. In a way, this was ahead of its time and probably influential on many similarly vapid movies to come. So, it gets credit for being a pioneer, and I guess is good at what it sets out to do, but with all of these ingredients, it could have been both popular AND had some substance. But they chose to skip the substance.

Romancefest 2017: Somewhere in Time

I'm glad I finally sat down to watch SOMEWHERE IN TIME because I've been wanting to see it for a while. Why? Because it stars Superman himself, Christopher Reeve. I've seen far too few Christopher Reeve movies, and this is probably the most notable one outside of the SUPERMAN series, so here we go.

Reeve stars as a young playwright. As the movie opens, he's a college student celebrating the opening of his new play when he's approached by a mysterious old woman (Susan French) who gifts him with a pocket watch and says, "Come back to me." Later that night she dies.

Flash forward 8 years and Reeve is a successful playwright with writer's block. He escapes Chicago and impulsively stays at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in hopes of clearing his block. Upon arriving at the hotel he sees the portrait of an actress who performed at the hotel in 1912 and feels himself drawn to it. Who is she? Why is he drawn to her? He has to investigate.

For a variety of reasons Reeve becomes increasingly convinced he somehow visited the hotel in the past, in 1912, met the actress, and had a relationship with her. He visits a college professor with knowledge of time travel (George Voskovec) and learns that he might be able to hypnotize himself into traveling back in time.

Of course, since this is a movie, this device works, and Reeve is able to return to 1912 and meet the actress (Jane Seymour) who is struggling with an overbearing manager (Christopher Plummer) but seems to recognize him as he arrives with a wistful, "Is it you?"

I loved the first half of this movie. Christopher Reeve is the perfect guy to cast as a romantic who earnestly believes he can travel through time to be with the woman he loves. He just has that ability to seem optimistic and intelligent at the same time. His investigation at the hotel is intriguing, and the sequences involving his attempts to travel through time are also interesting.

The problem is, when he gets to 1912, things fall a little flat. Although the great John Barry score soars, and although it's sweet when Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour meet, there's no real romance here. It's all very romantic, to be sure, but there are no specifics to latch onto. Why does Reeve like Seymour and why does Seymour like Reeve? They're just destined to be together. That's nice to say in love notes but it's boring on the big screen. Who cares about destiny when you could have cute scenes where the two characters explore each others' personalities and share experiences that draw them together? Not me.

Romancefest 2017: 10

There are certain movies you haven't seen that you're still aware of because the trailers, or because of what your friends have said about them, or because they loom so large in pop culture that you feel like you've seen them even if you haven't. And then there are those movies you're aware of because they had memorable VHS box art and you saw them on the shelf at the video store.

That's Blake Edwards' 1979 romantic comedy "10" for me. Nothing is more memorable about that movie to me than seeing Bo Derek on the cover of the video box running down the beach when I was just a little kid wandering the video store aisles. I was probably too young to think it was sexy, but a memorable image is a memorable image, so for my entire life, "10" has been good box art, as far as I'm concerned.

Now I've finally seen the film, and have discovered that far from being the sexploitation flick I assumed it would be, it's actually a somewhat insightful farce about a dude's mid-life crisis and how he projects it onto a woman he becomes obsessed with.

Dudley Moore stars as a famous composer who is struggling with life after 40 and can't stop thinking of a woman he sees in traffic, on her wedding day (Bo Derek). After alienating his long-suffering girlfriend (Julie Andrews), Moore embarks on a quest to track down Derek on her honeymoon in Mexico. Wacky hijinks ensue. One thing leads to another and Moore amazingly gets his chance with Derek, but things aren't as he expects, and he learns a valuable lesson! Good shit.

This movie was well reviewed and well liked at the time it was released, and for a while, I think, looked like it was going to permeate the pop consciousness and stay there. But it has since faded. I think part of the reason for that is that in the early scenes of the film, Moore comes off as weird and unlikable for seemingly no reason. You don't really start to identify with him until maybe a half hour into the film, and for many audiences, that might be a little too long. Once he goes to the dentist and suffers through fillings just to get some info about Derek, the comedy really kicks in and you start to see where this movie is going, and why. But up until then you're kind of annoyed by Moore. Oops!

If you want to compare it to something more recent, I'd wager the makers of FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL must be fans of this flick. Once Moore hits the Mexican resort, you can see where the SARAH MARSHALL crew must have gotten some of their ideas and tone. Speaking of, Brian Dennehy is particularly entertaining as a bartender at the resort.

This was, of course, the movie that made Bo Derek a household name and she's nicely acquitted here, actually coming off as more impressive in her dialogue scenes than she does in the scenes where the camera's just ogling her body. Her character also comes off as somewhat more reasonable and modern than Moore's, with her biggest sin being that she might be a little flaky. She's not a femme fatale or anything like that. Ultimately, she's just from the wrong generation for Moore.

That's why the movie's message isn't insulting. It's not about how Moore finds out the perfect 10 isn't perfect after all. It's about how Moore finds out stuff about himself that he didn't previously know, or at least didn't admit. So, there's hope for us guys, after all.

Romancefest 2017: Ryan's Daughter

I've been looking forward to watching RYAN'S DAUGHTER because it was directed by David Lean, director of one of my favorite movies, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. I've seen several of his others, including BRIEF ENCOUNTER, which was featured in Romancefest 2011, and I always like a chance to tick off another box on a great filmmaker's filmography.

RYAN'S DAUGHTER has all the trappings of Lean's usual epics but it's all at the service of a much smaller story than usual. We've got the Maurice Jarre score, the 70mm Freddie Young cinematography, an overture, an intermission, a long running time. But this time Robert Bolt's screenplay isn't about big ideas or crucial moments in history.

Sarah Miles stars as the daughter of a pub owner (Leo McKern) in a small coastal village in Ireland, circa the middle of WWI. Miles is bored of her small town life and wants some excitement, thinking she's found it in the local schoolteacher (Robert Mitchum) who she decides she's in love with. Mitchum attempts to talk her out of it, citing his middle age and quiet life as reasons Miles' problems wouldn't be solved by hooking up with him. But Miles won't take no for an answer, and she's young and pretty, so they're soon married.

Meanwhile, McKern doesn't just own the local pub: he also supports Irish freedom fighters while serving as an informant to the British forces currently based in their town. The town itself is anti-British and the villagers openly mock the soldiers on their patrols, including a new Major (Christopher Jones) who shows up with a false leg, a limp and a nasty case of PTSD thanks to seeing action firsthand in the trenches.

The village mob includes a nosy, but still wise, priest (Trevor Howard) and a deformed, mentally challenged mute (John Mills) who has a crush on Miles and, is the butt of cruel jokes from the other villagers, and spends most of his time being in the perfect places to observe secret trysts.

What secret trysts, you ask? Well, turns out Mitchum's right. Miles remains bored even with her new husband and after helping Jones through a bout of shell shock, forms a connection with him and enters into an affair. Not only is an affair cause for gossip itself, but the idea that a girl of this village would sleep with a British invader is unthinkable to the mob. So, we realize things might not turn out great.

Ugh. I've spent so much time talking about the plot, and there really isn't that much of it to be discussed. Most of the running time is made up of beautiful shots of beautiful scenery, and the characters end up being minor specks dwarfed by the epic-ness of it all. Unfortunately, I don't think that is the point of the story -- it is just a straight up love story, and it is not about the meaninglessness of man's selfish pursuits when compared to the rest of the world. Although maybe it should have been.

There are many great scenes though and one stunning sequence in which the villagers attempt to retrieve a shipment of weapons during a huge storm at sea. I have no idea how they shot this sequence, because it looks like a real storm, and real actors running head on into huge waves and gusts of wind among craggy rocks. It's a wonder no one was killed! Maybe it's the magic of cinema and the whole thing was safe, but this sequence looks astoundingly real.

The movie's from 1970, which you forget during its running time, because it plays out like a much older film. That's not to say the technical specs aren't top notch. They are. But the way the music highlights dramatic moments, and the way the villagers form a mob, and the way that mob informs the morality of the story that the characters have to reckon with, the way the village idiot is so broadly performed, makes it seem like old Hollywood instead of something contemporary with the changing world of more challenging and gritty films that were hitting theaters in the late 60s and throughout the 70s.

In the end I think RYAN'S DAUGHTER is worth a watch, if only for the cinematography and scenery. Of course if you've never seen Lean's other films, there are several you should put before this one, including DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, which has also been (unfairly) accused of being an overblown soap opera, but marries the epic with the intimate in a much more successful way.

Romancefest 2017: Jules and Jim

Here's the first movie of Romancefest 2017 that's not from America, France's 1962 flick JULES AND JIM, directed by none other than Francois Truffaut. I first heard of JULES AND JIM during my Tarantino obsession in high school -- apparently Jules in PULP FICTION was named for this movie. Remember, Jules goes to Jimmie to get help after they blow Marvin's head off on accident? Get it? Jules? Jimmie? JULES AND JIM! Naturally this meant I had to rent the movie, so I did, and then I was like, "Wait, this is not like Pulp Fiction, I'm bored." So I turned it off an hour in and never finished it.

Now that I'm an old man, I've given it another shot, and I'm glad I did, because it turns out that Francois Truffaut is really a good filmmaker, after all. Who would have thought. Just kidding. Obviously he is. I was just dumb when I was a teenager.

But enough about me and my crush on Quentin Tarantino. JULES AND JIM stars Oskar Werner as reserved Austrian writer Jules who becomes best pals with womanizing party-guy Jim (Henri Serre) in pre-WWI France. After running around town and partying with each other a while, Jules and Jim meet Jeanne Moreau, who hooks up with Jules and starts a relationship. The three of them hang out together and become buddies, and Jim keeps his hands off her because Jules plaintively requests, "Not this one." Still, both dudes are enchanted with Moreau's free-wheeling ways and it's clear she has important connections with both men.

Eventually they're ripped apart by the advent of WWI, with Jules and Jim both fighting in the war. The best friends are reunited after the war at Werner and Moreau's seemingly-idyllic home in the wilds of Austria. But there's trouble in paradise. Moreau ends up hooking up with Serre, with Werner's blessing, and she bounces back and forth between the two best pals and some other lovers, as all three of them try to find their places in the post-war world.

As the story develops, Moreau's behavior becomes more and more erratic, and at a certain point I was beginning to wonder if this was just misogyny seeping through, showing us a "damaged" woman and the way she ruins the friendship of two men by getting between them, or if this movie really was an honest exploration of Moreau's character's personality, willing to go as deep as it could into her psyche. Turns out, the movie's willing to go deep. Although there is a tinge of misogyny in the structure of the film, the idea that the male friendship is pure before a woman taints it, the movie is willing to commit to Moreau actually being a troubled individual, and not just a meddlesome woman.

For the second time this Romancefest, I found myself watching a film thinking, "I bet Wes Anderson's a fan of this flick." Which is funny, since Tarantino was my gateway to this movie. From one director to another, I guess. Werner is downright Owen Wilsone-esque and the deadpan narration and robotic reactions of the leads immediately reminded me of Anderson.

Romancefest 2017: Three Coins in the Fountain

Before this I had two reference points for THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN.

The first was PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES in which Steve Martin attempts to start a sing-along in the bus to "Three Coins in the Fountain." No one knows the song and John Candy saves the day by launching into the FLINTSTONES theme song.

The second was the time I helped my friend David shoot a short movie, BUM DEAL, starring our other friend, Isaac. Isaac played a bum who was scrounging change out of the bottom of a fountain, and he asked us if he could sing, "Three Coins in the Fountain" just before being accosted by David with a fish wacker. At the time I assumed he knew the song from its original source, the film THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN, but as I think back on it, he definitely had a distinctly Steve Martin-y tone of voice when he launched into song, so who knows.

Anyway, now I've finally seen 1954's THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN, the tale of three American women in Rome who toss coins in Trevi Fountain and try their luck with love. Dorothy McGuire is the secretary of an expatriate American author (Clifton Webb), Maggie McNamara has just arrived and fallen in love with a prince (Louis Jourdan) and Jean Peters has the hots for a local translator (Rossano Brazzi) even though she's about to head back to America to get married.

Complications arise. McNamara seduces her prince by figuring out his likes and dislikes and then pretending to be the woman of his dreams. Webb finds out he's terminally ill. Peters is scheduled to be shipped out when it's suspected she's having an affair. Etc.

Anyway, the movie's pretty boring and just fluffy sitcom stuff. It is cool to see some sweet Rome scenery, and it was fun to see Trevi Fountain, where I posed with my Trail Blazers shirt on even though it was never broadcast on Comcast SportsNet NW. It's beautifully shot and the first movie in color of Romancefest 2017 so far, but the story's not that interesting.

BUM DEAL, on the other hand, is super good.

Romancefest 2017: Father of the Bride

I remember seeing both the Steve Martin version of FATHER OF THE BRIDE and its sequel in the movie theaters back when they came out, and I liked both of them. I was always vaguely aware they were remakes of older movies but never got around to seeing the 1950 original until now.

Spencer Tracy stars as the titular FATHER and Elizabeth Taylor is on hand as the titular BRIDE. It's quite a star-studded combination. The story of course involves a put-upon father struggling with the idea of giving up his little girl who has decided to get married. His wife (Joan Bennett) takes to wedding planning easily, but obstacles stand in the way, like money, guest lists, future in-laws, etc.

The movie's cute and funny but I couldn't help getting preoccupied with just how rich and privileged these people are. It doesn't ultimately matter to the plot, I guess, and it's a fairly common trait of old Hollywood movies, and I guess even current ones, to feature characters and families and homes that stand in as wish fulfillment for the viewers. I guess the idea is it's more fun to see big fancy houses than working class ones. Now that I'm thinking it over I guess one thing that separates this movie from other similar ones is that the family's wealth is incidental to the plot. Somehow that makes it stick out more.

So, the drama (even though it's comedic) is mitigated, I think, because these people are suffering from first world problems. Ultimately who cares if a rich lawyer is awake at night worrying about his daughter's impending marriage to a guy who seems perfectly fine?

This stuff didn't bug me in the Steve Martin version. I don't know if it's because I was younger when I saw the movie or what. Probably.

Romancefest 2017: The Heiress

Director William Wyler and Montgomery Clift return to Romancefest with the 1949 film THE HEIRESS, based on the novel WASHINGTON SQUARE by Henry James. Olivia de Havilland stars as the daughter of a wealthy widowed physician (Ralph Richardson) in New York who lives near Washington Square Park. She's shy and quiet and it's beginning to look like she'll never marry off when she meets Montgomery Clift as the charming but less-rich (read broke) cousin of her cousin's new fiancee.

Richardson immediately suspects Clift is no good, mostly because he inherited some cash and spent all of it touring Europe, rather than joining society as a gentleman and trying to grow his fortune. We also realize early on Richardson doesn't think much of his daughter, either. Even though she's nice, and thoughtful, and devoted, and smart, and pretty, and Olivia de Havilland, he views her as a boring disappointment, especially compared to his dead wife, who he still worships.

The thing is, Clift is super convincing, and we want everything to work out for sweet and shy de Havilland, and her Dad is such a dick, that we're convinced it's true love. I don't want to give anything away except to say that not everything is as it seems, and about halfway through the movie we're as unsure what to think as de Havilland is, as she waits for Clift to come and sweep her away.

I've been in love with de Havilland ever since I saw her in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD back when I was 10 or so. Around the same time I saw GONE WITH THE WIND and even though de Havilland's Melanie infuriates Scarlett O'Hara with her perfectness, my love was only cemented further.

Here, she first gets to play to type as the perfect, well-behaved daughter and then later against type as a bitter woman on a revenge-fueled quest. Clift also gets to go both ways, first as a legitimately charming love interest and later cashing in on his built-in edge as a guy we're not sure what to think of.

Romancefest 2017: Gilda

Time for a little noir in Romancefest, 1946's GILDA. In case you're wondering which movie this is, I'll tell you. It's the one in the SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION where Rita Hayworth throws her hair back and all the inmates go crazy. And for good reason. I mean, Rita Hayworth. Come on! What an entrance. Does it get any better than that? Orson Welles in THE THIRD MAN and Rita Hayworth in GILDA. I think that about covers it.

Hayworth stars as Gilda, the kept wife of an evil casino-owning cartel leader (George Macready) in Argentina who takes a degenerate gambler (Glenn Ford) under his wing. Unbeknownst to Macready, but knownst to us, Ford and Hayworth had a previous relationship that didn't end well. Ford is charged with not only watching over Macready's casino, but also watching over Hayworth, and the sparks start to fly. One of the central conceits of this flick is that there's a thin line between love and hate. This is typical of noir but a little more complex than your average Hollywood romance, especially when it's done as well as it is here, with Ford and Hayworth positively on fire with chemistry and animosity.

There's a few twists and turns along the way, as you might expect from noir, and most of the major characters shuffle their roles around a little. Ford starts as the put-upon anti-hero and grows into a villain. Hayworth starts as a dangerous femme fatale but transforms into a victim. In fact, one of the most admirable aspects of this film, is that it starts Hayworth off firmly in cliche land, as the evil woman who's going to ruin you if you don't stay away from her, and then totally flips the script and shows you exactly why she does what she does, and you understand and sympathize with her fully. After all, it's hard to survive abuse.

This movie has it all: romance, intrigue, adventure, action, suspense, sex and musical interludes! It doesn't get much more entertaining than this.

Romancefest 2017: The More the Merrier

1941's THE MORE THE MERRIER was a great surprise. Up until now I've never even heard of this movie and I have to say I may have enjoyed more than any other movie this month, so far. This is another George Stevens flick, the 2nd of Romancefest 2017, starring Jean Arthur, also in her second Romancefest 2017 appearance. This is significant to me because one of my all time favorite films is SHANE, also directed by George Stevens and starring Jean Arthur.

Unlike SHANE, THE MORE THE MERRIER is a laugh out loud comedy. It takes place in Washington DC at the beginning of the US involvement in WW2. From the beginning of the movie, I can only surmise that it was commonly known that there was a housing shortage in the US at the time, because most of the early jokes involve how hard it is to find a place to stay in Washington DC. In fact, Charles Coburn shows up as a retired millionaire who has come to Washington DC to consult on the crisis, finds his hotel unavailable, and cons his way into Jean Arthur's room for rent that she'd rather rent to another woman. Oh, well. Too bad for her.

Or maybe too bad for him, also, since Arthur turns out to be a type A control freak who has their entire morning routine planned out down to the minute. On the bright side, this leads to one of the funniest scenes in the movie in which Coburn attempts to follow her routine, but mucks it up, as the two mismatched roommates weave in and out of rooms, bumping into each other, narrowly missing each other, and generally getting in each other's ways.

Not one day into his stay, Coburn meets Joel McCrae who needs a room before he ships out. Coburn offers to rent half of his room, unbeknownst to Arthur, and at first attempts to keep the third roommate a secret from her in another hilariously choreographed sequence of near misses in the increasingly cramped apartment.

This is just the beginning of the various misunderstandings and comedic set pieces, though, as Arthur and McCrae grow sweet on each other and things get complicated with Arthur's fiance (Richard Gaines), a bureaucrat also working on the housing crisis. I won't get into the myriad shenanigans here except to say that amidst all the hijinks, a really affecting love story does develop between Arthur and McCrae, with Coburn playing cupid along the way.

Coburn is perfect as the meddling old man, charming and innocent even as he is doing shitty stuff like scheming to read Arthur's diary, constantly resorting to offering, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead," as his over-arching philosophy in life, and excuse for everything. McCrae is not just a hunk, he also brings a lot in the comedic-timing department, and a lot of his charm comes from the way he becomes unlikely  buddies with Coburn. Arthur is in her 40s here but convincingly plays a 20-something career woman who barely has time for romance, let alone two frat boy roommates.

Romancefest 2017: Meet John Doe

Here's the 2nd Frank Capra flick of Romancefest 2017, 1941's MEET JOHN DOE, starring Gary Cooper just like the last one and surprisingly another major influence on one of my favorites, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY. Yet again, it's a title I'm familiar with even though I've never watched the whole thing, and yet again, it's great. I guess Capra knew what he was doing.

At first I assumed this flick would be the movie that was the basis for MEET JOE BLACK with Brad Pitt, but I was all confused. That was loosely based on DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY, which has nothing to do with MEET JOHN DOE.

So, with that out of the way, Cooper stars as an ex pro ball player turned homeless drifter who is chosen by a news reporter (Barbara Stanwyck) to stand in as the face of an editorial letter-writer she's invented, known only as John Doe. John Doe "writes in" regularly to rail against the direction the country is heading in, and vows to commit suicide on Christmas Eve as a result.

As the articles become more and more popular, a rival newspaper suspects John Doe's not real, and John Doe is called upon to make radio appearances and attend speaking engagements. Stanwyck's editorials get more complex, eventually espousing a "love your neighbor" philosophy bothered from her late father's journal. Oh and someone else used to say that, too. Who was it again? Oh yeah, JESUS CHRIST.

Anyway, Cooper is tempted with cash to admit he's a fraud, resists, becomes more popular than ever, has his followers turn on him, contemplates actual suicide, and so on. Along the way Walter Brennan plays his hobo buddy and conscience, and pretty much steals the show, and Edward Arnold shows up as the newspaper's publisher who wants to exploit the John Doe business to create a third party and run for president.

Aside from telling a compelling morality tale and espousing values I happen to agree with, MEET JOHN DOE also scores by being genuinely funny and beautiful to look at, especially the dramatic final scenes in the snow as Cooper comes close to suicide. Stanwyck is great as one of Capra's standbys: the cynical reporter who grows a conscience. I guess since this is Romancefest I should mention that Stanwyck and Cooper both develop as characters through their evolving relationship with each other. I'm used to Stanwyck in sexpot or femme fatale roles so it was a nice surprise to see her as a giddy, plucky and driven news reporter.

It's interesting to me that IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE has gone down in history as a popular Christmas movie when MEET JOHN DOE has not. MEET JOHN DOE espouses morals Christians should appreciate, and has a climax that takes place on Christmas Eve, with lots of Christmas imagery and even a Scrooge-like character in the form of the newspaper publisher.

I've said so much and forgot to talk about Gary Cooper. What is there to say? The man's a star for a reason. Once again he makes it look easy. So easy, he might be dismissed by anyone not paying attention. Kinda like Capra himself, I guess. But Cooper walks the tight rope, playing a guy who bounces from down and out, to taking advantage of a situation, to growing a conscience, having his faith crushed, and finally finds redemption. And the whole time, he's likable, simple, understated and even funny. People say Tom Hanks is the modern Jimmy Stewart, but I'd say he's also the modern Gary Cooper. If they ever had to remake HIGH NOON, I'd suggest getting Hanks on the phone.

Romancefest 2017: Maytime

MAYTIME was a weird one. This 1937 musical was loosely based on a 1917 operetta and stars Jeanette MacDonald as an Opera star. It starts off with MacDonald as an elderly woman enjoying a small-town May-day celebration, complete with the maypole and everything. A quarrel between a couple young lovers (Tom Brown and Lynne Carver) triggers a flashback to MacDonald's life as a young woman.

Turns out, she became an Opera star in Paris after performing for Napoleon III (Guy Bates Post) with the tutelage and guidance of a famous voice teacher (John Barrymore). After her successful breakout performance, Barrymore proposes to MacDonald. She accepts, not out of love, but more out of practicality, and soon finds she's made a mistake when she meets someone more her age and style, another singer (Nelson Eddy).

She stays true to Barrymore, however, until eventually running into Eddy again, this time as co-star of a big show they're to appear in together. Their chemistry is so obvious that it brings down the house but also tips Barrymore off and leads to the tragic ending.

What's so weird about that, you ask? Well, as the movie unfolds it becomes increasingly clear the movie itself is just a clothesline to hang a series of fully played-out and uninterrupted opera performances on. So it's not like a conventional musical where the songs move the plot along. It's more of a concert film with plot elements sprinkled between lengthy opera performances. MacDonald and Eddy are obviously talented vocalists but most of the songs are not in English, and there aren't any subtitles, so you really have to be an opera buff to enjoy it.

There is one more traditional Hollywood musical interlude in the middle of the picture in which Eddy sings "Will You Remember" to MacDonald in a park under a tree, and that scene works within the context of the movie. But most of the rest of the musical scenes bring the flick to a screeching halt. That's a shame because there is some beautiful cinematography and set design to be seen along the way, and the ending, where the two lovers are reunited in death, is very beautiful.

One other weird thing, and this might be considered a spoiler, so stop reading if you care about that kind of stuff. So, the framing story where MacDonald is an old woman and is inspired to reflect on her life after witnessing a young lover's quarrel? The young woman lover wants to go off on a trip to become a famous Opera star. The young man lover wants her to stay so he can marry her and start a family. After hearing MacDonald's tale of an unhappy marriage and being kept away from the man she truly loves, the young woman lover comes to the conclusion that she should give up her career and stay behind and devote herself to her man.

This might fit the popular ideals of the time, but that's not what I'd get out of MacDonald's story at all! Yes, on a literal level, her devotion to her opera career is what led her to marry the wrong dude and kept her away from the right dude. But, on a more metaphorical level, she was kept away from the thing she truly loved just for a man. And that's what's going to happen to this young couple: the woman will be kept away from her true love (opera) so she can marry some guy!

Romancefest 2017: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

Here's a title I've always heard but never actually seen, Frank Capra's 1936 hit MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, starring Gary Cooper. I've been a fan of the Capra films I'd seen up until now, and DEEDS is just as good as the rest, with the same core values that make Capra's voice so unique.

The story concerns Cooper as a small-town guy who inherits a fortune and is brought to the big city by a crooked lawyer (Douglass Dumbrille). Dumbrille wants Cooper to grant him power of attorney, but Cooper's too smart for that.

Jean Arthur, who I've always loved thanks to SHANE, shows up as a plucky reporter who goes undercover as a damsel in distress to get close to Cooper and expose his hillbilly eccentricities (which aren't even that bad -- just shocking to the New York elite). This is all in spite of the fixer hired by Dumbrille specifically to keep the press away from Cooper played by Lionel Stander who did the voice of Kup in the all time classic (to me) TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE. Stander almost steals the show, here, with his gruff, streetwise performance.

Cooper eventually hits on an idea to give his fortune away to poor, struggling farmers -- promising to purchase each of them a plot of land to work that they can eventually own. This is insanity to Dumbrille, who hatches a plot to get Cooper officially declared insane and transfer his fortune over to another potential inheritor who might be more malleable.

The movie moves along at a nice brisk pace with lots of jokes but also lots of sincerity, and most of the heart of the movie is in Jean Arthur, who goes from a cynical reporter out to exploit Cooper for her own success to really honestly falling in love with what he stands for and eventually inspiring him out of his depression when things get rough. Cooper's good, too, but he's given an almost Christ-like or Superman-esque role as the square good guy. It's necessary to making Capra's points but not the most showy of characters. Still it's the kind of thing Cooper is good at -- exuding a basic goodness and simpleness without seeming dumb. He's kinda like Robert Redford.

One thing I never realized was how much of an influence this movie was on the Coen Brothers' THE HUDSUCKER PROXY. You've got the hillbilly coming to the city, ending up in charge of a big corporation, the elites trying to take him down, and a reporter disguised as his lover exploiting him. It was fun to see where this stuff came from and realize guys considered as cool as the Coens are fans of a director as unrightfully pegged as square as Frank Capra.

Romancefest 2017: Dodsworth

The 1936 film DODSWORTH was directed by William Wyler and stars William Huston in the title role as a down-to-earth, self-made business man, who has just stepped down to retire from running his Dodsworth motor plant. His wife (Ruth Chatterton) wants to spend their retirement jet-setting around the world. She is obsessed with wanting to remain young and convinced that Dodsworth has grown into a boring old man who needs to lighten up.

At first things start out amiably, even though you know they're not perfect, but eventually the narrative becomes clear: this is the story of an ill-matched couple realizing too late they're not right for each other. They're both scared to split up but don't really want to be together. Huston is too boring and conventional for Chatterton and Chatterton has her eye on too many other men, as a result.

Both have flirtations, resist temptation, come back together, separate again, etc. At one point Huston returns home to be with his newly married daughter (Kathryn Marlowe) and her husband (John Howard) and the counterpoint between the stress of Huston's marriage and the happiness of his family's home life is strong.

On his travels, Huston meets Mary Astor as a divorced ex-pat in Italy and they get along well. It looks like the spark of a nice relationship but of course Huston has to remain loyal to Chatterton. But how loyal is Chatterton to him? She becomes increasingly obsessed with night life, dating around, acting younger than her age. It gets to the point where both agree on a divorce, but even those plans are thwarted as Chatterton is forced to come running back to Huston.

That's when the final scenes of the film play out and they're great. This movie is refreshingly grown-up. It's about real, serious relationship issues and approaches them without much in the way of Hollywood's usual trappings. The devestating final scenes as Huston and Chatterton board a cruise ship to head back to America are the best in the movie, and Huston's final line to Chatterton is amazing. I don't want to give anything away but let's just say in those final moments their marriage finally, decisively ends, and Huston finally stands up for himself.

Romancefest 2017: Alice Adams

I was excited to watch 1934's ALICE ADAMS because it's directed by George Stevens and stars Katherine Hepburn. These old movies are always slightly more fun when you're familiar with some of the credits. George Stevens directed one of my favorites, SHANE, and I never went out of my way to watch all his movies, but I'm slowly ticking them off the list. Aside from being a huge star, Hepburn's notable in ALICE ADAMS for being so young! I'm used to seeing her in the prime of her career, but here she was still just starting out.

Hepburn stars as Alice Adams, the youngest daughter of a lower-middle-class family that wishes it was upper-class. Hepburn wants to be a part of high society, but she doesn't get invited to the right functions by the right people because her father (Fred Stone) is merely a bed-ridden factory clerk and her brother (Frank Albertson) is a gambler. There's a convoluted backstory about how Hepburn's father invented a glue formula but hasn't capitalized on it, and a mystery as to why the factory owner (Charles Grapewin) keeps him on the payroll even though he's always home sick.

Alice is not only ostracized from society because of her family's standing in the community but also because of her shallow, transparent and desperate attempts to put on airs and force herself up the social ladder. So, she's partially a victim of society but also her own worst enemy in some ways.

That is until she catches the eye of a rich dude played by Fred MacMurray, and her mother (Ann Shoemaker) pushes her father into starting a new business. Then, things start to change, but do they change for the WORSE?! You'll have to watch to find out.

Hey, there's two WIZARD OF OZ connections in this flick. The first one, I couldn't believe. Hepburn's father is played by Fred Stone. I couldn't believe it when I saw the name – previously I've only ever seen this name listed as the physical comedian who played The Scarecrow in the Broadway version of THE WIZARD OF OZ from around the turn of the century. I've never seen him in anything, so it was crazy to finally see him, hear his voice, etc., even if he's much older here than he would have been when he was The Scarecrow. Also, there's Charles Grapewin, who played Uncle Henry in the famous MGM film, as Hepburn's Dad's boss. So there you go.

Fred MacMurray is likable as always, and it's fun to see him young here, too. Once again the star power helps this movie be a little better than its soap opera plotline.

Romancefest 2017: Of Human Bondage

OF HUMAN BONDAGE is a title I've heard my entire life and never bothered to check out because it seemed so lofty. The 1934 film is based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham. I guess it must have fallen into the public domain because the copy I got from Movie Madness was from a print so bad as to be almost unwatchable – but not quite. If you can see through the mud and hear through the noise, it's worth a watch.

Quite the opposite of being about big stuffy ideas, OF HUMAN BONDAGE is the very small and emotional story of a club-footed artist (Leslie Howard) who gives up on art to become a doctor when he is told he has no talent. He pursues his new career half-heartedly, for obvious reasons, and finds himself infatuated with a waitress (Bette Davis). Davis alternates between openly treating Howard like shit, making fun of his disability and verbally abusing him, and stringing him along by not quite rejecting all of his come ons, shrugging, "I don't mind."

Most of the movie is about this rocky relationship: poor Leslie Howard has low self esteem and can't stop thinking about Davis – Davis can't stop treating Howard like shit. She eventually marries someone else (Alan Hale!), Howard meets a nice lady (Kay Johnson) but then Davis shows back up again, pregnant and manipulating Howard into helping her. This ends Howard's nice new relationship, and he devotes himself to Davis again before she disappears.

Rinse, repeat, this time with Howard meeting Frances Dee and her whole family, all of whom treat him nicely and help him recover from his low self esteem. Still, Davis turns up again. And so on.

This is the movie that made Bette Davis a star, and it's an interesting star turn because it's an almost entirely unlikable character. She is not a traditional romantic lead here. In fact, she's the embodiment of the "bad girl" who will ruin your life, if you let her. Still, she's alluring and you can see why Howard's interested. She's also not totally unsympathetic as her story reaches its tragic end.

Howard, of course, is great, and whenever I see one of his films I always think about what a shame it is that his plane was shot down in 1943, robbing film fans of decades more of his performances. He still made his mark, but it's a shame he died so young because he could have been an even bigger star.

Romancefest 2017: Queen Christina

QUEEN CHRISTINA is a 1933 film starring Greta Garbo as the titular heroine in a loose retelling of the life of a 17th century Queen of Sweden. The movie opens with her father's dramatic death on the battle field, then moves to the 6-year-old queen's coronation before flashing forward.

It's been decades of war and Christina wants peace. Her advisors want her to marry and produce an heir, and everyone wants her to hook up with the local war hero (Reginald Owen). A Count (Ian Keith) also wants to wed Christina, but Christina is more interested in running the country than wasting time on men.  Her closest relationship seems to be with her lady in waiting (Elizabeth Young).

She eventually falls in love with a Spanish envoy (John Gilbert) on her own terms and pursues him even after he at first holds back out of loyalty to his king, who he has traveled to Sweden to represent in a proposal of marriage to Christina. The two make plans to run away with each other but tragedy strikes.

Probably the most interesting aspects of this flick, aside from the sweet sets and costumes, are the gender politics prominently on display. First of all, the whole movie is about a woman in power who doesn't rely on men. Secondly, there are overt suggestions that Garbo has the hots for her lady in waiting and even gets jealous when her lady in waiting gets tired of waiting and hooks up with a man.

Finally, the most fascinating sequence of the film is Garbo and Gilbert's first meeting. Garbo has disguised herself as a man to go out riding and take a break from her queenly responsibilities for a while. She stays at an inn with some travelers, including Gilbert as the Spanish envoy, and the two of them hit it off as buddies. Even though to the audience Garbo clearly signifies as a woman, Gilbert and everyone else in the inn assumes she's a man, so their entire courtship is played out as if it is between two men. Even when they eventually go to share a room for the night, it kinda seems like Gilbert has the hots for Garbo even before he realizes she's a woman. And it isn't until after he finds out that she's a woman that he has to push her away (for non-sex related reasons, but still).

Anyway, that kind of stuff makes QUEEN CHRISTINA more timely and more interesting than a more straightforward costume/period piece might have been, so it's definitely worth a watch, especially if you've never seen Garbo in action before.

Romancefest 2017: Trouble in Paradise

I was excited going into 1932's TROUBLE IN PARADISE because it was directed by Ernst Lubitsch. I've previously seen TO BE OR NOT TO BE, NINOTCHKA, HEAVEN CAN WAIT and THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, and they're all great, so I was glad to get another Lubitsch film finally watched.

A few moments into TROUBLE IN PARADISE I started to wonder if Wes Anderson's a fan of Lubitsch, by any chance. We start with a  couple con aritsts (Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins) each attempting to con the other by posing as nobilitiy, only to realize they're both trying to rip each other off, and then falling in love with each other out of mutual respect for their con artistry. Marshall's performance along with a complex exterior shot using miniatures to complete a camera move made me wonder about Anderson, and after the movie was over I read up on it and realized my hunch was correct: this flick was an inspiration for THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL.

Anyway, the two con artist lovers move on to take advantage of Kay Francis as a famous perfume manufacturer living in Paris. While she's preoccupied with two would-be suitors (Edward Everett Horton and Charles Ruggles), Marshall works his way into her trust as her secretary and then gets to work diverting tons of cash to her safe so they can then break in and steal it.

Of course Hopkins begins to wonder if Marshall is falling for Francis, the two suitors become suspicion of Marshall, and everything gets all mixed up and crazy. It was fun to see Edward Everett Horton yet again. It seems like his distinctly recognizable face pops up in pretty much every flick from the 30s, from SWING TIME to ARSENIC AND OLD LACE.

But the real scene-stealer is Marshall in the lead. His deadpan delivery, posh accent, and gentlemanly demeanor all stand perfectly counterpoint to his slimy intentions and humorous remarks. He approaches con artistry almost as if it is simultaneously beneath him and an inescapable part of his being – as if he's addicted to it, but better than it at the same time. I guess that's what makes him charming, and reminds me so much of Ralph Fiennes in GRAND BUDAPEST.

Really, the romance takes backseat to the capers and comedy here, but you wouldn't care half as much about what happens to Marshall and Hopkins if you weren't first charmed by their meet cute and then rooting for their unorthodox union to hold strong.

Romancefest 2017: Red Dust

Another year, another Romancefest. I'm going to watch 28 romantic movies in 28 days and write about each of them. This year I'm pulling my list from filmesite.org, a website I've used for reference ever since college. For some reason it only recently occurred to me to use them as a source for my various lists. As usual I'm sticking to either films I've never seen or films I may have seen but remember so little I may as well watch them again. This year I'll be going in chronological order whenever possible, though some of this depends on what is and is not checked out at Movie Madness.

We start with 1932's RED DUST, starring Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. This flick was directed by Victor Fleming, the credited director on both THE WIZARD OF OZ and GONE WITH THE WIND, among many other classics. It was cool to see a younger Clark Gable in this movie, especially working with the director who would later go on to immortalize him.

Gable stars as the owner of a rubber plantation in French Indochina. As the movie opens he's sick of the shitty conditions and dealing with the natives, and things only get worse when Jean Harlow shows up as a prostitute on the run from some trouble upriver in Saigon. At first Gable doesn't want a girl in his way, no matter how much she looks like Jean Harlow (va va voom), but eventually he warms up to her. She's "one of the guys," and has no trouble putting up with the extreme conditions, so they have a short affair and soon it's time for her to move on.

Next, an engineer (Gene Raymond) shows up to work on the plantation with his wife (Mary Astor) in tow. I'm not familiar with Ramyond but it was fun to see Astor in something other than THE MALTESE FALCON. Here, rather than playing a femme fatale, she plays the opposite of Harlow – she is NOT one of the guys, and although she tries to put on a brave face, she's not at home at all in the jungle conditions.

Still, Gable's into her, soon seduces her, and the two embark on an affair. Around this time Harlow shows back up again, eager to strike back up her friends-with-bennys relationship with Gable, only to find some cowardly sneaking around is going on. Needles to say she doesn't like it.

Eventually someone gets shot, which is funny, since up until this point this didn't seem like the kind of movie where someone would end up shot, and things resolve themselves. Overall the movie's pretty good, with 3 compelling leads and a (mostly) lighthearted romantic storyline. The setting is exotic and it's interesting to see some of the workings of the rubber plantation, although this also leads to some of the movie's more awkward moments as the natives aren't treated in a very culturally sensitive way, specifically Willie Fung as the very racially-stereotypey house servant who's supposed to be the comic relief but will make modern audiences cringe, which is a shame, since it's not Fung's fault.

As far as romance is concerned, this pre-code flick has plenty of steamy scenes including Harlow bathing in a barrel and Gable and Astor's impassioned embrace in the middle of a monsoon. But the main attraction is the chemistry among the stars. That outshines the soap opera plot.

Postcards from the Edge

I remember seeing POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE as a kid, and my mom explaining to me that it was written by Princess Leia -- known to common folk as Carrie Fisher. That captured my imagination: the woman who played Princess Leia also wrote movies? And books? I remember seeing the trailers and TV commercials over and over again where Meryl Streep, as Fisher's alter-ego, held onto the edge of a building, towering far over the street, and let go of the ledge just long enough to shrug helplessly without falling -- because she was lying flat on a movie set. That captured my imagination, too.

Of course it wasn't until years later that I really appreciated the well-told narrative of a mother-daughter relationship beset with the troubles of substance abuse and show business. And I don't think I ever appreciated it more than the other night when the Hollywood Theater showed the film on the big screen in 35mm in remembrance of the passing of both Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds.

On paper you wouldn't think this flick needs to be seen on the big screen, but I'll tell you, half the movie is told in the facial expressions of Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine, as Streep's mother (the Debbie Reynolds character) and nothing shows facial expressions and closeups better than the big screen. That's only part of it, though. The other part is the fact that a couple of the most pivotal scenes in the film are musical performances, and while I'm sure they work on TV, there's no way they're as emotionally impactful as they are on the big screen, with big sound, in a crowded theater, especially the closing number, where Fisher is wise enough to have her character's catharsis play out through song, when dialogue's not enough.

Another closeup scene: late in the flick, Streep applies makeup to MacLaine's face. MacLaine was brave to shoot this scene, without any visible makeup at first, including just the stubs of what are left of her eyebrows. The scene's inherently intimate, as Streep brings her ailing mother back to life with the aid of cosmetics, but nothing's more intimate than an intimate scene on a giant screen.

I've said so much without even touching on the story -- Streep plays a drug addicted actress fresh out of rehab who is forced to move back in with her mother, also a famous actress (MacLaine), to satisfy the agents insuring her new film. Dennis Quaid's on hand as a slimy suitor of Streep's, along with Annette Bening in a scene stealing role as his other girl, and Gene Hackman as a wise director who just wants the best for Streep, but won't put up with her worst. Richard Dreyfuss is also there as the doctor who pumps Streep's stomach after an overdose and then asks her out on a date, in a climactic scene in which Streep admits she's not quite ready for that yet. This is the kind of movie where that statement is a major revelation.

All this said, let's not forget the movie is genuinely funny and in that way the script, based on the novel by Fisher herself, stands in as a symbol of the woman: funny, true, complicated, beautiful, wise. It's hard to watch the movie without forgetting Streep is an actress playing a character, and not Fisher herself, and MacLaine is the same, and not actually Debbie Reynolds.

The definitive scene occurs when Streep and MacLaine confront each other about their individual forms of substance abuse. It's funny, heartbreaking, and riveting, all at once. Both actors go at it with everything they have and neither hits a false note. Is there any better movie out there about mothers and daughters? Maybe. But I've never seen any better than this one.