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CXV: Adam's Rib (George Cukor, 1949)
One of several Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy pairings - though personally I prefer her with Grant. Tracy has a bit of a bruiser appearance, so I'm not sure he fits in comnedy as well as the debonair until he loses it Grant.
Tracy is the Assistent DA prosecuting a woman (Judy Holliday) who has shot and injured her philandering husband (Tom Ewell), Hepburn the lawyer who defends her on the grounds of double standards, and who will stop at nothing to show up the patriarchy.
But, of course, this is an equal billing film so she can only go so far, and it must be contrived that both win or lose. She has to go Too Far and enperil her own marriage, at which point the game she is playing turns out to not be so much fun. This sort of film always comes back to the sense of masquerade of womanliness described by Joan Rivière in the 1920s: if a woman is more intelligent than a woman she'd be smarter not to let him know.
Fun though, and intended to be part of a Hepburn double bill but I'll not yet watched the second film.
CXVI: The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
A cynical comedy about one night stands, infidelity and adultery in an era supposedly before the sexual revolution. Well, just before. Jack Lemmon is a poor, down-trodden cog in an insurance office (a nod to Kafka?) with one trump - his apartment. He lends his apartment for an hour or so at a time to (male) colleagues so they can enjoy their trysts, in the hope of getting promotion. Meanwhile he lusts after Shirley Maclaine's lift girl. The inevitable happens - the person who can give him a promotion has an affair with the object of Lemmon's affections, with consequences.
Pretty well every one in the film is prostituting themselves in one way or another - the exception perhaps a neighbouring doctor who gives his services to Lemmon for free. What is also striking is the all-pervasive technology - the lifts, the ones, the remote controls, the electric blankets, the telephones, the adding machines, the televisions - as the people themselves risk becoming machines. It teeters on the edge of sfness. Lemmon gives up watching Grand Hotel (another Oscar winner) on tv as he can't last through all the adverts.
Lemmon is brilliant, as almost always, a sympathetic every man who none the less has questionable motives - and as householder he becomes feminised before reuniting with Wilder for Some Like It Hot. Maclaine pulls off what could be a thankless role - she is more than victim, more than just a naif. Recommended.
CXVII: Ben X (Nic Balthazar, 2007)
A deeply moving Belgian film, based on the director's bestselling YA novel inspired true events, and featuring Asperger's and bullying.
Ben is a teenaged boy who got autism at an early age - or, rather, as he puts it, autism got him. Of above average intelligence but lacking in social graces and self-confidence, he is mercilessly bullied on the way to and at school, but is not aided by the teachers because he cannot name names. First thing in the morning he plays a computer game, and has now reached level 80, where he is joined by a female player. There comes a time when he has to seek revenge on his tormentors, and take what he's learnt from the game into the real world.
Inevitably the director doesn't play fair and shamelessly manipulates us into caring and empathising with Ben. The helplessness is added to by the intercutting, documentary -like, of talking heads of Ben's family, teachings, carers and psychologists. It's not clear whether these come before or after the climactic scene, which matters. Probably before. The director takes us into Ben's world, both the computer game, the intercession of the computer game in the real world, and Ben's view of the world. In the end, of course, he is happiest in the simulation, in his own world. Is that enough?
This is definitely a three or four Kleenex movie, and Timmermans puts in a deeply convincing (to me) and moving performance. I suspect he is somewhat older than the character he plays, but that hardly matters. The supporting cast are pretty good as well, and the whole is very compelling if in the end frustrating.
CXVIII: Teeth (Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2007)
The sort of movie Reese Witherspoon would have been cast in had this been made a decade ago.
Two brooding, phallic cooling towers overshadow Dawn's home in small town America, belching ever darkening smoke into the sky.
As a child Dawn (Jess Weixler) somehow bit off one of her (half?) brother Brad's fingers, and ten years later she has taken a vow of chastity, promising to save her virginity until her wedding night. This proves difficult to stick when she gains a boyfriend, Tobey (Hale Appleman), and even more so when they go skinny dipping. Tobey forces himself on her, with grisly consequences. Meanwhile Dawn's mother (Vivienne Benesch) is dying of an unnamed condition and Brad (John Hensley) is trying to force his attentions on Dawn.
A darkly comic and satiric horror film, which manages to have its cake and eat it. On the one hand it taps into deep, unpleasant male (Freudian) fears and misogynistic impulses, and the whole sex-is-bad horror thang. On the other, Dawn is curiously empowered, and given ultimate control of her body once she has matured - it owes a debt perhaps to the old rape-revenge video nasties.
It is funny if uncomfortable viewing, although the (largely student) audience were rather moronic in some of their responses, and frankly I could have done without them.
Totals: 118 (Cinema: 49; DVD: 64; TV: 5)
One of several Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy pairings - though personally I prefer her with Grant. Tracy has a bit of a bruiser appearance, so I'm not sure he fits in comnedy as well as the debonair until he loses it Grant.
Tracy is the Assistent DA prosecuting a woman (Judy Holliday) who has shot and injured her philandering husband (Tom Ewell), Hepburn the lawyer who defends her on the grounds of double standards, and who will stop at nothing to show up the patriarchy.
But, of course, this is an equal billing film so she can only go so far, and it must be contrived that both win or lose. She has to go Too Far and enperil her own marriage, at which point the game she is playing turns out to not be so much fun. This sort of film always comes back to the sense of masquerade of womanliness described by Joan Rivière in the 1920s: if a woman is more intelligent than a woman she'd be smarter not to let him know.
Fun though, and intended to be part of a Hepburn double bill but I'll not yet watched the second film.
CXVI: The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
A cynical comedy about one night stands, infidelity and adultery in an era supposedly before the sexual revolution. Well, just before. Jack Lemmon is a poor, down-trodden cog in an insurance office (a nod to Kafka?) with one trump - his apartment. He lends his apartment for an hour or so at a time to (male) colleagues so they can enjoy their trysts, in the hope of getting promotion. Meanwhile he lusts after Shirley Maclaine's lift girl. The inevitable happens - the person who can give him a promotion has an affair with the object of Lemmon's affections, with consequences.
Pretty well every one in the film is prostituting themselves in one way or another - the exception perhaps a neighbouring doctor who gives his services to Lemmon for free. What is also striking is the all-pervasive technology - the lifts, the ones, the remote controls, the electric blankets, the telephones, the adding machines, the televisions - as the people themselves risk becoming machines. It teeters on the edge of sfness. Lemmon gives up watching Grand Hotel (another Oscar winner) on tv as he can't last through all the adverts.
Lemmon is brilliant, as almost always, a sympathetic every man who none the less has questionable motives - and as householder he becomes feminised before reuniting with Wilder for Some Like It Hot. Maclaine pulls off what could be a thankless role - she is more than victim, more than just a naif. Recommended.
CXVII: Ben X (Nic Balthazar, 2007)
A deeply moving Belgian film, based on the director's bestselling YA novel inspired true events, and featuring Asperger's and bullying.
Ben is a teenaged boy who got autism at an early age - or, rather, as he puts it, autism got him. Of above average intelligence but lacking in social graces and self-confidence, he is mercilessly bullied on the way to and at school, but is not aided by the teachers because he cannot name names. First thing in the morning he plays a computer game, and has now reached level 80, where he is joined by a female player. There comes a time when he has to seek revenge on his tormentors, and take what he's learnt from the game into the real world.
Inevitably the director doesn't play fair and shamelessly manipulates us into caring and empathising with Ben. The helplessness is added to by the intercutting, documentary -like, of talking heads of Ben's family, teachings, carers and psychologists. It's not clear whether these come before or after the climactic scene, which matters. Probably before. The director takes us into Ben's world, both the computer game, the intercession of the computer game in the real world, and Ben's view of the world. In the end, of course, he is happiest in the simulation, in his own world. Is that enough?
This is definitely a three or four Kleenex movie, and Timmermans puts in a deeply convincing (to me) and moving performance. I suspect he is somewhat older than the character he plays, but that hardly matters. The supporting cast are pretty good as well, and the whole is very compelling if in the end frustrating.
CXVIII: Teeth (Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2007)
The sort of movie Reese Witherspoon would have been cast in had this been made a decade ago.
Two brooding, phallic cooling towers overshadow Dawn's home in small town America, belching ever darkening smoke into the sky.
As a child Dawn (Jess Weixler) somehow bit off one of her (half?) brother Brad's fingers, and ten years later she has taken a vow of chastity, promising to save her virginity until her wedding night. This proves difficult to stick when she gains a boyfriend, Tobey (Hale Appleman), and even more so when they go skinny dipping. Tobey forces himself on her, with grisly consequences. Meanwhile Dawn's mother (Vivienne Benesch) is dying of an unnamed condition and Brad (John Hensley) is trying to force his attentions on Dawn.
A darkly comic and satiric horror film, which manages to have its cake and eat it. On the one hand it taps into deep, unpleasant male (Freudian) fears and misogynistic impulses, and the whole sex-is-bad horror thang. On the other, Dawn is curiously empowered, and given ultimate control of her body once she has matured - it owes a debt perhaps to the old rape-revenge video nasties.
It is funny if uncomfortable viewing, although the (largely student) audience were rather moronic in some of their responses, and frankly I could have done without them.
Totals: 118 (Cinema: 49; DVD: 64; TV: 5)
