Palm Beach Story

Rating: 80%

(http://elisesramblings.blogspot.co.uk)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

1942

Country:

Predominant Genre:

Romance

Director:

Best Performances:

Premiss:

Inventor needs cash to develop his big idea, so his loving wife decides to raise it for him by divorcing him and marrying a millionaire.

Themes:

Personal change | Self-expression

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Unknown

Review Format:

DVD

Absurdly-plotted comedy about the human absurdity of the relationship between money and sex.

Claudette COLBERT does well in a role that does not really fit her. She is ill-at-ease with slick, fast paced dialogue; preferring to use her cheekily-expressive face to get across the movie’s more censorable elements.

Rudy VALLÉE is brilliant as a mild-mannered millionaire who talks an awful lot of sense about life and business; taking his inherited wealth as it comes – as he does people. Mary ASTOR essays her usual sluttish characterization (based partly on herself) with unmistakable relish and well-meaning gusto. She is silly and superficial, but you cannot help laughing because she is so funny with it. And, as usual with director Preston Sturges, he foregrounds the women as a way of showing how weak and overblown the men are.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Magdalene Sisters

Rating: 80%

(www.revistacinefagia.com)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

2002

Countries:

Predominant Genre:

Drama

Director:

Best Performances:

None

Premiss:

Three young women struggle to maintain their spirits while they endure dehumanizing abuse as inmates of an asylum.

Themes:

Original Sin | Political Correctness | White culture | White guilt | White supremacy

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Behind Convent Walls

Review Format:

DVD

Erotophobia

About Christian hypocrisy concerning sexual matters and Christian’s gynophobic belief that women are the fount of all Original Sin.

Here, God is not love, but obedience; with the resulting desire for arbitrary power over others in that absence of freewill.

Insightful look into an institutionalized culture that is dying because it hates the individual. This institution here is the wider culture in macrocosm, so that true escape is only possible mentally. The choice offered is to hate yourself or hate others; while pretending that whichever you select is a form of God’s love.

Like all do-gooders, the nuns in this convent are not out to reform their charges. They wish to provide themselves with holier than thou jobs for life by exploiting healthy sexuality for the religiose aggrandizement of the sisters who, themselves, lack a carnal outlet.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Battre mon Coeur s’est Arrêté

Rating: 80%

(http://timmitotoro.wordpress.com)

Also Known As:

Beat that my Heart Skipped

Year:

2005

Country:

Predominant Genre:

Crime

Director:

Best Performance:

Premiss:

A man finds his heart and soul torn between loyalty to his family and a need to be redeemed from his violent lifestyle.

Themes:

Personal change | Self-expression

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Review Format:

DVD

Leopards, Spots & Change

Unusual, interesting – if somewhat unlikely – tale of a brutal and unscrupulous property-dealing thug who yearns to change his current lifestyle to become a concert pianist.

The only way to make this sincere – and convincing – is via an intense central performance from the lead actor. And that is just what we get: Romain DURIS is an excellent performer who comes across as a hybrid of a young Robert De Niro and a youthful Daniel Day-Lewis.

(http://timmitotoro.wordpress.com)

However, to fully persuade us that a leopard can successfully change his spots, it is essential to explain why he is the way he is and why he would want to change. This movie assumes we already know the answers and thus only plays well to its middle-class gallery.

There is no profound elucidation of human nature here; suggesting the screenwriter can only create characters like his limited self.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Wild Bunch

Rating: 100%

(www.newwavefilm.com)

They Came Too Late & Stayed Too Long

Westerns rarely come as good, or aspire to the heights of genuine Elizabethan tragedy, as this closet gay tale of loyalty among men who have nothing else to offer one another.

This is a Darwinian tale of men out of time whose thwarted masculinity refuses to change and, thus, they must die; the machine gun here symbolizing the advance of a soulless culture, without adventure - as does the fact that the police here are shown to be just as prone to criminality as the outlaws.

Director Sam Peckinpah is a genius who tells stories visually with minimum dialogue.

As in Shakespearean tragedy, death is the only consummation devoutly to be wished for these men-without-women. ‘Let’s go!’ is repeated throughout, yet these characters have nowhere to go. These men can only find redemption through death, without which their lives would be completely meaningless.

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Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Far from Heaven

40%

(www.rottentomatoes.com)

Facile product of institutionally-racist minds.

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Copyright © 2010 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.