Reviews

The movie is dated 1963.

Its source Broadway musical is dated 1960.

The movie version introduces the song, Bye Bye Birdie, as well as the Speed-up drug, anticipating the switch in the music business from songwriting to chemistry, although, as the decade progressed, chemistry moved beyond amphetamines, into the LSD mixtures of Owsley Stanley. (Did the screenwriter know this when writing the movie version? He also wrote scripts for the Marx Brothers.)

The script joke about how chemistry will impact society extends beyond music since junior (Ms. Margret's character's younger brother) is making bombs out of the fertilizer business, or is it just the screenwriter's way of explaining why his chemistry set includes the ingredients for speed-up, the new drug of choice for the future sixties?

So it was not the book writer, Michael Stewart, but the screenwriter, Irving Brecher, who anticipated the bridge between the music business and chemistry, supplying speed-up to the conductor of the Moscow Ballet orchestra.

We also see in 1963 fans camped out on the lawn of the ordinary Ohio home of the randomly chosen fan, which apparently means something to me.

As for why we are able to have the Moscow Ballet in Ohio it makes sense because it is touring the country on a Kruschev mission of goodwill and it so happens its performances in Ohio coincide with Ed Sullivan's schedule for them to appear on his weekly show

-- his Sunday night variety show, introducing to the US the greatest in entertainment, anticipating the appearance of the Beatles in February, 1964, but of course, providing glimpses of Elvis Presley's pelvis performances from the waist up.

Elvis's draft notice was in 1957.

However, Conrad Birdie's name is a mutation of Conway Twitty, also a popular rocker at the time.

More on casting here: Stepping in for Broadway's Michael J. Pollard, the movie version features another popular rockish singer, Bobby Rydell as the undertaker's son who pinned the randomly chosen fan.

We see Ann Margaret enamored of Conrad Birdie. She is soon to be cast by the same director on at least equal footing with her co-star, the actual Elvis Presley, in Viva Las Vegas, 1965.

Vivian Leigh, stepping in as a Spaniard substitute for original Broadway cast member, Chita Rivera, plays the determined and devoted girlfriend of a man with mother complex. Movie character men with mother complexes were common then. Her 1962 movie, The Manchurian Candidate, victimized one and she was murdered by one in her 1960 movie, Psycho.

Dick Van Dyke followed the production from Broadway, also appearing in Mary Poppins.

He doesn't think he can dance or sing and he's incomparable. He just plays the role, singing to and dancing as instructed.

I think neither Ann Margaret nor Dick Van Dyck had any idea at the time how naturally superlative they are.

Oona White choreographed for director George Sydney (and for Carol Reed's Oliver!),

Mr Sydney was a 1940's MGM musical director, as was Stanley Donen who took his 1960's independence to England. Two for the Road and his own Bedazzled are examples of Stanley Donen's accomplishments.

This movie, Bye Bye Birdie, operates as an accomplishment for Mr. Sydney although to make it more personal, he took Ann Margaret to Elvis Presley himself in Viva Las Vegas, giving Presley a run for his talent, while here she plays the ordinary all American girl next door here, enamored of Conrad Birdie. As in the movie, the English Patient, where the English Patient is anything but English, Ms. Margaret is Swedish.

Paul Lynde became the leader, the reappearing center box, of TV's celebrity bluffing game, Hollywood Squares.

And that's all I can think of here.

Whatever its prophesies, this movie will always be a demonstration of the musical greatness of its songwriters.

Perhaps humor is already here, but as I wallowed, I asked, could they have played this heartbreaking romance more for laughs?

The movie makers are way ahead of me with their most hilarious moment, following online-instructional-video-posts to perform brain surgery.

I'll return to the notion that Little Fish is a romantic science fiction comedy (on a scale of intimacy similar to movies by Andrei Tarkovsky and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir of 1947), but first...

I often consider the Matrix movie as a launching pad for the general discussion, "What Is Cinema." Its story of reality beneath reality is a meta-outline of what every movie creates.

Little Fish is itself a meta-outline of the Cinema of flashbacks. Movies (especially those resembling indie-cinema?) often use time-jumps as an integral part of the story. Flashbacks should gain new meaning as they are reprised and reassembled, and in Little Fish they do like tidal waves, arriving at a cyclical conclusion.

As the credits roll, we, the viewers, can fill in the blanks. The more we do the more satisfied we will be that we chose this move.

Testing memory opens a wide field of episodes featuring the two leads. As actors they are convincingly together. The leads are us. They are we, the people, of the moment. They are misleadingly ordinary, and on other occasions show themselves, in flashes, to be part of the pantheon of spectacular movie stars (aren't we all?).

As to the humor, there is something inherently funny in the loss of memory as an exaggeration of our human condition. The feeling of loss is built into our mortality. It is love, the feeling of immortal love, that triumphs over memory.

The isolation of the lead characters is integral to the romance, yet it also simplifies the movie. Let the story boil down to the two of us (my reference point here is the end of Assimov's Second Foundation). This resonance of intimacy perhaps began with a 1947 movie, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which also applies a loss of memory.

As a worthy follow-up, Little Fish continues the resonance sounded by Memento, from which it draws techniques to assist memory, probably because the characters in Little Fish also saw Memento.

However, unlike Memento, Little Fish is the story not of one, but of two.

Or is it? Whose story is this? She is the narrator so it appears to be hers and her memory is also compromised.

I remembered the work of Andrei Tarkovsky during a scene of the fellow walking by a country house resembling a pre-space launch scenes in Solaris.

Having only also seen Tarkovsky's Stalker, I can compare pacing. Little Fish is far more gentle on its audience's time and ability to focus attention.

I draw my own conclusion from Little Fish, and its science fiction virus. The loss of memory does not matter. We instinctively return to what we've built into ourselves. Having a dog helps us know what that is. We are one in two. If there is devastating sadness (and don't be discouraged!) it is in discovering we have not yet found our other, better, half.

In this movie the couple has found, or allowed themselves to be willing to find each other.

From the couple can be a more expansive inclusion of love for everyone, but it starts, I think, with two.

Humanity's oral history tradition was great but we continue to develop the belief that fixed medium supplements memory.

The final humorous conclusion one can draw from Little Fish is... Who needs memory?

Peter EXCELLENT WORK! Director: Chad Hartigan Writers: Aja Gabel, Mattson Tomlin Stars: Olivia Cooke, Jack O'Connell, Soko, Raúl Castillo I guess the music was also good: Keegan DeWitt

I recommend reading my comments after seeing the movie, but if you never intend to see it, read them now:

The script gives its characters words we should not expect them to say, to express insights that should surprise us. The characters follow the path to cinematic fulfillment (the movie leads to a road trip). For all its appearance of social consciousness, Three Billboards is an entertainment.

The artful ways the movie delivers platitudes makes the platitudes seem fresh. The characters must be in darkness (since they're from Missouri?) before discovering that they can move into the light. They're supposedly racist and bigoted -- what does that have to do with finding or failing to find a rapist/murderer?

Now that I have asked, I offer an answer. The practice of racism and bigotry breaks down its practitioner's will to work overtime, and it reduces the incentive to explore the unknown.

Movie vengeance, however, is always worth the extra effort. To demonstrate the degree to which one can work overtime, the fired police officer nearly kills himself to catch the monster criminal.

Ultimately, there could be a cover-up to protect the accused, who is a desert marine, in order to demonstrate the degree of bias the police can have in favor of veterans over civilians.

But the conjecture is for our own amusement. The piece is a construct, filled with incendiary randomness...cancer, suicide, torture, rape, murder, arson (To quote memorable lines from Bob Dylan, "Abe said, where do you want killing done? God said, Out there on Highway 61" ... by the three billboards.).

These unexplained initial acts (How low can humans go?) are what make the movie possible.

As with Tarrantino movies (which get more entertaining the older they get) some human automaton out there must be willing to do a horrible act in order to test everyone's reactions.

In Mr. McDonagh's move (this one), the lines that resonate currently are spoken in the brick-a-brack shop "Did you do it?" Answer: "No." The unspoken further answer for the audience to add later is, "but I've been doing the same thing in Iraq."

Yes, I kept watching. Toward the half-way mark the surprises in cross narratives grabbed my attention and held me to the end. That in itself deserves my acknowledgment of efforts of all involved in creating this piece.

There is a Nicholas Roeg reference in this movie, which I see discussed elsewhere in the IMDB comments which I did not believe while watching.

In the movie, the movie on TV is "Don't Look Now," Mr. Roeg's Venetian Lost Child Thriller. "Don't Look Now" is scary. It doesn't mount social consciousness issues to create self-satisfying entertainment. (I'm thinking the resurgence of socially conscious entertainment began with the 2004 "Crash."

I like that this movie ends with the two major stars on a road trip.

SPOILER ALERT REGARDING THE WRITING STYLE HEREIN... This is just one angle of obsessive consideration about why this movie is one of the greatest ever made... this angle: THE TWIN SHOTGUNS, THE TWIN CLOCKS...

So let me get this straight.

The shotgun is shoved up one or both of Waldo's two priceless clocks.

Was it hidden in Waldo's apartment and he carries it to Laura's place, an apartment with two entrances, or did he always leave it in her twin priceless clock just in case?

Meanwhile, Shelby thought it was a good idea to put a -- that no country home should be without a -- shotgun above the fireplace mantle, so there are twin shotguns, too. Yes he mounted one of them in Laura's country house which Mark says she'd recently fired, she who left the city after discovering Shelby, her fiancée, also shares time with the ad agency model, whenever Laura is not available... so Shelby, knowing Laura is away, at her country house in Connecticut, brings the model, Diane, to Laura's empty and available apartment while Laura is gone. That's a good idea.

Laura even tells Mark that it is as if she killed Diane herself.

But no... it is Waldo who sees from the street that the light in her apartment is on, sees the two figures in the window, goes up, with the shotgun he'd been carrying during his walk, or no, getting the shotgun from the clock innards where he'd inserted it before bringing it to her place. (?)

One way or the other he gets his shotgun, and fires both of its two shotgun barrels into the face of the model, Diane, kind of instantly upon her opening the door to see who on earth was the person knocking on it.

No one hears the shots? or even though they do, Waldo has time to wait for Shelby to leave, then go back into the apartment.

I guess he re-enters through that back entrance that Laura always keeps open. Perhaps everyone except Waldo is afraid to go in there (it's not an empty apartment building.. he fired shots heard round the world). Waldo shoves the smelly shotgun back up the clock where it rests throughout the movie.

There is much inquiry and an unprecedented real-time segment of silent drinking.

End scene, Laura is in her bed-sitting room listening to Waldo's broadcast. Waldo walks in (I guess discretely shutting off the radio). She really has had enough of him and his bully pulpit character assassinations and has almost come to resent his inability to accept her interest in helping other men. She waves away his gun so it shoots into the ceiling.

Waldo, after being perfectly shot in the chest by someone other than Mark, fires his last shotgun barrel into the face of his priceless clock.

Focus on the shattered clock face. THE END...

Yes, I want to write the sequel about the relationship between Laura and Mark narrated by Waldo from the grave.

With Razor's Edge this movie demonstrates why actors Tierney and Webb make such a great screen couple.

Otto Preminger directed this movie as if he was a man, or rather, a person, who knew too much.

Splice satirically portrays the change in a compatible couple when they have a child. I felt sorry for the lead actors because during the first half of the movie they are acting their hearts out. The movie progresses toward greatness. They lose steam during their humiliating presentation of two globular growths that attack one another. There is charming inattention to estrogen and testosterone variance. The charming couple loses their charm as they confront the limitations of their parenting skills. They grow uglier as the movie progresses. Because this movie had such a promising start I am devastated by disappointment.

In the screening last night everyone was moved and impressed with how the song and dance played against a believable relationship of dependency. Some remarked upon how harrowing the movie becomes, and that it really doesn't have a happy ending, just an acknowledgment that the dependency is mutual. The two other reviews here well describe the relationship: the fellow is talented but rudderless without a good woman, his wife. He gives 1000% as an entertainer. Someone who actually cares about him needs to reign him in. He is eager to please and will break his back in the process. He's portrayed by the real thing, Dan Dailey. His eyes say it all. He cannot be left alone. It's a scary and accurate portrayal, and Betty Grable balances his intensity with her own nobility and sincerity. This movie dispels any preconceived notions of them as lightweights. The play is engaging (I have Sherry Britton's copy of the play) and this movie adaptation (by Lamar Trotti) may improve upon it. The songs and skits improve with further viewing. They represent a compendium of Burlesque! The songs include Ray Henderson's The Birth of the Blues, Dan's flashy song and dance number announcing his arrival in New York, performed with help from little tanned shoe shine girls. Dan Dailey himself wears an eye- catching green shiny suit, and dances pretty beautifully. Other memorable songs are What Did I Do and By the Way (Josef Myro) ... Betty Grable asks What Did I Do? outside the bar by the harbor, and the title number, Bill Munro's When My Baby Smiles at Me is simply sung at the piano. It's an essential movie for anyone interested in furthering the legend of burlesque in the United States. The supporting cast is great. Please note James Gleason, particularly appealing as the mid-level producer of the road shows.

This is a somewhat serious melodrama set in the unrest of an underdeveloped wilderness in South America. It is produced by people associated with horror movies. Writer Director Sergio Bergonzelli also wrote and directed In the Folds of the Flesh (Nelle pieghe della carne)... Gianna Maria Cannale has both horror and sword and sandal credits. The writer of the play from which this screenplay was adapted is Gualberto Titta, who wrote mostly horror stories.

On the surface, entrepreneurs are concerned with wood lumbering and with bringing a railroad to a backwoods settlement in El Salvador.

These laborers are incompetent at best. Their work fronts an activity that provides a bigger payoff, arms shipments, smuggling and delivering weapons to support the endless war effort between the military and the rebels.

Without commitment to any cause the "seven in the sun" sell weapons to the highest bidders.

The innocent parties are the indigenous nomadic tribes caught in the crossfire.

Can we blame these Native Americans for violently ambushing the gun runners?

The violence escalates with each new ambush.

The story, which is delivered to English speaking audiences by way of an adaptation by Frank Gregory, depicts characters having no socially redeeming qualities, although the star, Frank Latimore has some moments with a guitar (The music is by Aldo Piga.).

Ostensibly handsome, Frank Latimore, also the movie's producer, is as unsavory as the rest of the cast. Playing a bitter wanderer whose brother (Saro Uzi) betrayed him and stole from him the woman he loves, he arrives on the scene after being released from prison. He is the land surveyor for the railroad company!

He quickly gets involved in the more profitable business of gun running and must be forced by the story to have a change of heart and be a better man.

John Kitzmuller, from Dr. No is the luckless gun-runner driver teased for information by Marissa Beli.

The story does come full circle leaving the cast either dead or somewhat redeemed by the end.

Apparently this movie was shot in color. It looked good in black and white with a visual highlight being a fight in the mud beneath a sunny sky.

Within the territory of family drama this is a welcome addition, first because it reminds us of the mysterious land of Hawaii. (Hm. The last movie I can remember taking us to the 50th state is "Cocktail." There may be many Hawaiian movies... I just don't know...It's through rather circuitous circumstances that I even wound up attending the NYFF screening of This Movie.). I am curious about the source material. Is it as noble as the movie? Each character is strongly drawn and brilliantly casted... there is so much conveyed through the silent expressions of each as they listen to each other. This is much to the credit of the actors and the inconceivably professional work-a-day approach of the director and his staff. They are simply fulfilling the responsibility they assumed to deliver the movie with the benefit of their artistry, talent, and sensitivity. The question I have about the script is how it arrived at this perfect naturalistic state. I think it's fair to say seven years of work could have gone into it. And brilliant visual information illuminates the dialogue and narration. It all works seamlessly. In addition to humorously, sometimes hilariously, delivering great struggle, kindness and joy, The Descendants meets and raises a standard for creative worthwhile cinema. Perhaps another time we can consider plot elements (I have a fondness for, and issues with each). The movie features an investigation into a mystery after the fact. However,it plays less as plot structure than as a window into a relatable world parallel to our own. And there can be more. If everyone is up for it, I think this great cast and crew could deliver a great sequel. Peter Dizozza

It is problematic to identify with a reprehensible leading man, and that's the worthwhile opportunity this movie affords. Clark Gable plays an interesting character, an able and capable master of an unsupervised and inhospitable domain. I used to think Mr. Gable was a one-tone actor. He's far more multi-layered when teamed with Jean Harlow, and she's too smart and articulate for words. The three person dynamic of her always near Gable and Mary Astor is charming and even funnier since Gable takes it as a given. The sound recording technique still seems new in this movie so I miss some of the casually spoken dialog, but whenever I catch more of it, it is always a riot. The atmosphere is detailed and perfect. There is so much to see.

The movie looks like it's leading toward tragedy; what a pleasure to arrive at a comedy payoff...

Mary Astor is quite beautiful too, and in thinking back I suggest she's entitled to some sympathy and justification, since she succumbs to a man shifting his weight in an isolated position of a power. Anyway, let her and her husband (Gene Raymond) live the hypocrisies of civilized society...

Bring those rubber trees to Fordlandia!

Robert Aldrich made his impact upon me through The Killing of Sister George. I see he made Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, which also examines the private aging of people with a public image. The Grissom Gang supplements the Patty Hearst story of the 70's; however, the IMDb site identifies an under-the-counter novel from the thirties as this movie's source material. This fourth commercial failure film sounded the death knell of the Aldrich independent studio, Killing of Sister George being one of the prior failures. It's a brilliantly made movie, brilliantly acted as well, somewhere between trashy and operatic, but the annoyance factor is too great. Once you assume a cynic's personality there are no surprises here. Daddy's daughter meets the mamma's boy... there could have been an interesting love story there... they both are overgrown insulated children. I wish there was more room for them to respond. In terms of story cohesion, though, the problem I see is that: keeping alive the kidnapped victim is not what causes the kidnappers to be caught.

Please note: I read Gary Morris's recent review of this film and see it under a different and far more favorable light. Also, rather than lifting from the current headlines, this 1971 film anticipated the Patty Hearst media circus which began in 1974.

Like Blood of a Poet, this movie is surrealist cinema, using a unique achievement of the movie system, the reversal of time.

Movies can remove us, and then return us refreshed to our reality.

Here the cast members recorded their dialogue, learned to speak it from listening to it played back in reverse, and then actually spoke what they learned for the movie. It looks and sounds great, and what a great script!

I think Kierkegaard said it best when he wrote...life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.

There's a state of being for the two characters, rudderless from the loss of their parents? showing how they spend their days. They live in an eternity, interrupted abruptly, to thereafter never be the same.

(Comment on running movies backwards: My dream is to do a full length feature film with the last 10 minutes played out this way, ie. backwards... we reverse time upon the casting of the switching spell (suicide). It all takes place in an Octagon house in various stages of decay, and it's called "Witchfinders.")

I found "The Prestige" engaging, so I went with my nephews on Sunday to see "Inception." Mr. Nolan has codified the internal logic of dream reality and then sketchily/impressively/expensively? followed it. Most memorably, he identifies a formula for time as we delve into dreams within dreams... time shifting being a basic concept in movie shutter speed... the lower our subconscious level, the faster the passage of time, increasing in multiples of 6 -- ?? The arbitrary nature of dream landscapes opens wide the director's possibilities, including weightlessness while falling. "Inception's" visceral images of the four elements are awesome and exceptionally photogenic... Mr. Dicapria's commitment to raise his motherless children is the ticking bomb needed to propel us into a difficult dream invasion. Corporate assassins are after him, plus he's criminally charged with murdering his wife. He must return home to see his children's faces.

The reason for most of the battle scenes in this movie is the military armament of the subconscious to fight all invaders. That mental training allows for the most extended chases and fights...a little goes a long way, and there is a lot.

Everyone in the cast is charming and familiar. I recommend in the future that they have more dramatic dialogue and interaction. Underwritten and overplayed, "Inception" is more inspiring than fulfilling, and that is of course just fine...

Christopher Nolan is the director who skillfully documented the actual flipping a tractor trailer in "The Dark Knight" (of the Soul?), so it is to be expected that much of our time in "Inception" will be spent examining his skillful documentation of how well he can destroy his dream landscapes.

My nephews did not seem overly engaged in this story of dream invasion. However, to its creator's credit, "Inception" is ground floor entertainment with no direct antecedent as Mr. Nolan mixes the major cinema breakthroughs achieved in "The Matrix" with Charles Dickens' story of three ghosts implanting a viral idea in the mind of Ebenizer Scrooge.

As always, my interaction with this work continues. The preceding words are my thoughts on Inception as of today. Yes, I've already been referred to Pedro Calderon's play, "Life is a Dream." Thank you for that.

Mr. Pasolini wrote and directed, and this movie is an unbelievably great classic!... The film opens with a riotous prequel at the wedding of a pimp to another woman with his two year old son in attendance... the boy's mother played by Ms. Magnani enters with gift piglets dressed up like guests... it's an hilarious dinner party with singing, too.... then 12 years later we go up the stairs passed the loitering kids to a seedy apartment on the outskirts of town overlooking a graveyard?

(The landscape of mystic old and sterile new -- vacant lots separating housing developments -- is a view to be found in many Italian films of the 60's...)

In the apartment on a high floor with a view the teenage son and mother talk and tango, then the pimp returns to knock on the door... he needs her to earn a sum for him so he begs her to return to the streets when she was just about to get her son out of there... Apparently she bought an apartment in a development within Rome where people own businesses and even give a church-going appearance of respectability, but before moving there she has to work another two weeks.

Here's where you'll see a continuously moving and incomparable beautiful nighttime street walk... The shot begins at the moment she's earned enough money and she's bidding a fond addio to the street... She takes us on a night walk on the big plaza with people entering in and out of the frame during her monologue story of her marriage at 14... This is a miraculous segment that happens in one continuous shot... She describes her childhood marriage and the listeners only catch a part of it... only the movie viewer gets to hear it all... (Unfortunately, she has to go back to that plaza later in the film...more amazing night walks.) Pasolini follows her with a moving light... the dotted electric lights of rome surround her... it's immeasurable how moving this scene is, and what a cinematic accomplishment it is...

the film is in real time segments... The detail are easily referential. The full view they impart to the viewer are so much greater than the film's running time...

anyway the imbalance of upwardly mobile survival and adolescent development does in her son... (He's bound to a bed. The camera is positioned at a low angle for a view that runs up his body to his head.)

Her neighbors and colleagues are pretty heartless to her, but when she goes running off after hearing about her son's death ... you can bet we all follow say no, don't go. WE LOVE YOU ANNA MAGNANI!

I am writing without reading other comments. This movie I very much wanted to see, as the moments in 2007 quickly passed, and now in March of 2009 it is on Cable! The technical delivery of this movie to me was by way of time warner cable which offers it "on demand" in a cropped 4x3 condition. They broadcast it elsewhere, I think, in its full frame version, and I have seen portions of it then, including the ending conversation which I was disappointed to discover was not to occur outdoors, but in a windowless hell. "God damn hell of a show" figures prominently in my memory. It is not clear the level of silliness we're dealing with here. It could be very deep. I found distraction from my own flashback of when I discovered a little bowling alley in the cellar of a nondescript building in the beautiful Austrian Alps! Mr. Anderson also made Boogie Nights, which was impressively delivered cinema... I think he made magnolia, which apocalyptically delivered Aimee Mann's beautiful music. There Will Be Blood contained minimum surprises, when you come down to what the locals can expect from entrepreneurs, and preachers. The maverick's self-interest predominates and is suicidal. He needs a real family to keep him in reality. As the ending explodes into dignified music reprising that annoyingly used string quartet, after the clattering radiohead score, Daniel has just announced, "I'm finished." Will he in fact be held accountable for murder? Will standard oil get his pipeline? This movie could have been more educational, in case we actually want to start our own oil rig. Prospectors go mad... I'm reminded of Eureka, a Nicholas Roeg film, which was able to include women, that made a meta-medical analysis of the gold strike. I'm trying to think what I liked about this film. It may be the relationship between Paul and Daniel, the actors. The emotions neutralized in this film include love, hatred, ambition, and empathy. To witness more of how indelibly frightening Daniel Day Lewis can be, try Gangs of New York. Paul has quite a range as well, especially the way he pretended he actually had a brother.

This intenet movie database seems ready to recover every childhood impression I can remember...Mr. Chamberlain's performance showed up in our English class at Malloy, thanks to Mr. Jones and a few roles of video tape. I think 1972 was when we saw it. The great play seemed to precisely come alive in a relatable way. Richard Chamberlain had already been through the critical ringer for The Music Lovers, another personal favorite. A few years later, with the Thorn Birds and Shogun, he regained his popularity, but I want to alert here that he's pretty amazing, and this is his great Hamlet performance. This TV version is an accessible presentation of an enormous play.

My ever-present gaps of awareness are a given, so playing like a new release at that citadel for great film prints, the Museum of Modern Art, was "Too Late Blues." Yes, it's the first Cassavettes film I have seen. "Shadows" was running in the other projection room. I hope to see that one day. "Too Late Blues" is an uncompromising look at two people, Stella Stevens, to whom I think Tim Curry owes a lot, and that pudgy faced icon, Bobby Darin, whom I recognized as a great jazz singer during the time of Bobby Rydell...I have seen one photo of Bobby Darin, with Johnny Mercer as one of the "Two of a Kind" combo, which is a fun musical album. Johnny Mercer is his own jazz vocal stylist, apart from his creation of casually elegant lyrics... "and they commute by stratasferry, my, they love to fly... " Bobby Darin was up for singing with Johnny Mercer and was certainly up for acting in this harrowing Cassavettes movie. Seeing it, you will be a witness to his full range of disarming facade and insecure anger, as well as hers. If you've seen her standing around in Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor you'll think that Stella Stevens makes no sense in her harrowing range here. She's amazing. This is a human drama, brilliantly documented. There are wonderful aerial shots of party rooms. There's a bizarre lighting moment of Ms. Stevens backing into the bathroom while turning on the light. The locations were simple. The uses of space transformed them, such as the pool hall, which the director uses like an enormous landscape of varied canvases where no limit of trouble can transpire... Let's see, in the film Ms. Stevens moves from one man to another and in her career she moved from one vocal icon to another, Elvis Presley, also a fine actor, in Girls Girls Girls...a very different musical cinema riot. Look here also for a menacing performance by the actor who played the TV doctor, Ben Casey. This film's music is by the composer of the "Laura" theme. At the end of this film you may agree that, while you may have never seen it before, other movie makers did. I would call this an influential film. Coming back to Stella Stevens, I'm also reminded of Candy Clark's performance in the Man Who Fell to Earth... It is not a far leap to view the talented musician as alien. Let's run down the list of who could handle music icons. Well, Nicholas Roeg, in addition to filming David Bowie and Mick Jaggar, got a great performance from Art Garfunkel, who was already in Carnal Knowledge. I suppose Frank Sinatra and before him, Bing Crosby, already paved paths that included a jump from singing to acting. Prince has Purple Rain. Dean Martin did a great job in all those great movies other than the Silencers which Stella Stevens was also in. Keannu Reaves in... I don't know. I best remember John Cassavettes in "The Fury.".. If ever Mahler wrote a great film score, that one has it. And Cassavettes was in -- I have got to see this entire film, I actually only have a middle reel of it in French -- Rosemary's Baby. Stella Steven's last name in "Too Late Blues" was Polanski. You'll see that both Roman and John found the world within the four corners of individual rooms. The scene where Stella Stevens backs into the bathroom and turns on the light, I half expected she'd return to the apartment in Rosemary's Baby and that John Casssavettes would be on the floor playing scrabble. By drawing all these parallels I have avoided confronting the uncomfortable intimacy in an ultimately uplifting movie. I hope this review was helpful to you...

This movie was intense and funny in its analysis of a restless gifted person. She was an abortionist. The very bizarre close examination of the work she did includes a jaw dropping opening that makes it appear that the film was shot during the events as they actually happened. She is keeping her family together but then loses interest and becomes a rabble rouser for workers in a chemistry plant. She helps them keep their jobs when the threat of moving the plant to Portugal comes to light, but of course, gets her husband fired when they identify her as the agitator.

In the end she opens a stand at the plant selling sausages wrapped in union pamphlets... Very funny, even the abortion clinic segment where she converts it into a veterinary clinic after she coaxes a dog to break through the police tape for her. Great basic film-making!

30 years ago? This story is older than that. There's no place like London...

Somewhere along the line, the story made a quantum leap to LIFE... the characters became alive from their relatable drives and passions. It's probably the songs, but maybe something more from the ... poetics? Imagine a new movie delivering this level of musical intensity. (I probably wouldn't recognize it until 30 years later.) ..anyway...

The CONTEXT in which a standard song like Pretty Women is delivered adds to it another dimension, both hilarious and intense.

Following the what, the coitis interruptus at the barber chair between the barber and his customer, there's the rage, then the waltz, then the great montage, one of my favorite musical moments, which begins with a reprise of the song, Johanna, as an intro to a new song and a series of throat slicings, followed by the re-opening of the pie shop...

I'll bet Ms. Bonham Carter has a nasal Broadway vocal somewhere in her. Anyway, she's so cute and scary... the whole cast is that ...

The film is a great addition to the basic great score which includes a miraculous book. I am a fan of REAL TIME... Many shattering events follow from the song, "No One's Going to Harm You" to the ending credits, and they basically happen in REAL TIME...

Allan Rickman is remarkable, a great vulnerable foil for Johnny Depp, who appears as someone already familiar to many of us.

Sasha Borat Cohen still needs to play Saddam Hossain...

The film magnificently delivers the orchestral strains of the score.

The voices work well. Good sound blend! This film successfully layers a new level of creativity upon the other layers.

It's a good new film from Warner Brothers! Congratulations Mr. Burton and Mr. Sondheim!

Again, as to usefulness, I'm leaving a comment with decidedly mixed use... I received a 16mm print of this film from an ebay seller, not that I have seen it to the end, but I saw the beginning and can't help but wonder about the mother wolf in this film. Was she really the victim of a random shot from a plane? There's a big "G" rating before the film begins, and then a scene of violence and incomparable loss... Then the cubs do indeed appear separate from their mother as orphans in Mr. Robinson's cabin.... Is this a documentary? What happened to the cubs' mother? Don't tell me she was on the set throughout the production playing the interfering stage mother... oh, maybe she was... dizozza600@cs.com thank you...

UPDATE: I've seen the entire film. It really is an independent film made in Canada, apparently over the course of three years. It will enhance your appreciation of life away from civilization and the balance in nature. We confront breeds of our domestic pets in the wild. Yes, this film is very much worth seeing and discussing.

... and that's where the Americano comes in. He has to go to the Central American country of Paragonia along the cliffs of the Caribbean to teach the population how to use modern machines to mine whatever it is they mined there in 1910. The film was made in 1916 and hearkened back to those days before the great war made all the other wars squabbles... Douglas Fairbanks dances about and helps save the day when the Paragonian Presidente travels to New York to appeal to the mining company to send someone to help his economy flourish. Good thing he brought his daughter because Douglas would never have left Brooklyn were it not for the sight of her.

While in New York a military coup transforms his country into a military regime. Daughter rushes back with father, warning Douglas not to follow, which he does.

The film anticipates the HBO Pancho Villa film, "And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself."