Movie Review: Always

This movie was not what I was expecting.  I knew it was about people in planes fighting firers; and there is a love story involved.  However I did not expect the love story to come off the way it did.  Firefighting in the early days, after WWII was a scary business.  The fires sometime could look as bad as WWII bombing; but the pilots persisted.  This movie features four actors:
Richard Dreyfuss As Pete Sandich
Holly Hunter as Dorinda Durston
Brad Johnson as Ted Baker
John Goodman as Al Yackey

directed by Steven Spielberg

Yackey and Sandich are best friends.  Durston is Sandich's girl, who worries about the danger he puts himself in.  Turns our Yackey gets too close to a fire, and puts his plane on fire.  However Sandich saves him by dumping his load on the flames.  He gets our, but in doing so his own fuel tank blows up, killing him.  This movie ends up being an after life film, with Sandich using his influence to motivate others.  Audrey Hepburn has a cameo as the lady managing the gates to heaven.

Musical Movie Review: ****My Fair Lady (1964)

This is a musical triumph of major degree.  It also has costuming, form the poor to the wealthy which is fantastic.  Rex Harrison stars as Professor Higgins, the linguist who is determined he can teach anyone to speak proper English, and Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle, his subject.  Higgins' best friend is Colonel Pickering (Wilfred Hyde-White) and the father of Eliza is Alfred P. Doolittle (Stanley Holloway).  This movie has many catchy numbers including, "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?," "With a Little Bit of Luck," "Just You Wait [Henry Higgins]," "I Could have Danced All Night." "On the Street Where You Live," and "I'm getting Married in the Morning."  There is great fun here, and there is a romance included free of charge.  This musical is a Lerner and Lowe (Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe.

Movie Review: ****How to Steal a Million (1966)

Not that I like stealing shows, but in this case the motivation is different; they are stealing to cover father's habit of forging artwork.  Bonnet (Hugh Griffith) is the forger, Nicole (Audrey Hepburn) is his daughter who wants him to quit the forging business.  However Bonnet is obsessed with fooling people, and creating replicas of the masters.  The art expert, Simon, set to expose everything, is he who falls in love with Nicole (Peter O'Toole).  Finally there is lover of art, Davis Leland (Eli Wallach) who will even become engaged to Nicole, in an effort to convince her father to let him purchase the statue created by his grandfather.
This is really a delightful romantic comedy.  The characters work together and it is a fun show.  I especially like the hiding in a small closet thing.

Movie Review: ****Roman Holiday

This is An Audrey Hepburn Gregory Peck film.  It is Audrey Hepburn's first American film, and she was awarded the best actress Oscar for this film.  Hepburn plays a runaway princess, while Peck the reporter who is going to take advantage of the situation.  The photographer (played by Eddie Albert) helps him in this endeavor.  The princess runs away for a day, being fed up with schedules and expectations.  She meets up with the reporter, who discovers her true identity, but she does not think they know.  And so the reporter spends the day with her, hoping to write a story for $5000.  She befriends a barber who cuts off her hair.  They have many adventures, from eating ice cream from a vendor, a street-side cafe, a boat trip, riding a scooter and getting arrested.  They explain to the magistrate they are headed to their wedding, and everyone forgives the.  Who couldn't forgive Audrey Hepburn.  She is still traveling incognito.  They finally end up at a dance, where there are also secret service from her country, intent on taking her back.  However they get away.  She could go on with her adventure, but after hearing a radio story about her being ill, she realizes she must go back.  The reporter then realizes he has feelings for her, and squashes the story.  However he is at a press conference, where the princess makes it known she enjoyed her holiday, and the photographer gives her a present of all the pictures he had taken.  However, as is often the case, a long-term relationship is not possible as is made known at the end of the film.

My wife says I always give away too much in my reviews.  However, in this case the end is the best part of the film, and is what lingers.  Gregory Peck is the last reporter to leave, lingering while he thinks of how thinks might have been different.

I like Audrey Hepburn.  She has a certain charm and naivete.  Gregory Peck and Eddie Elbert are also good.

Movie Review: ***^Funny Face

Funny Face is a very entertaining movie.  It stars Audrey Hepburn as Jo and Fred Astaire as Dick a photographer.  It also has Kay Thompson as Maggie, a fashion magazine editor.  These three characters do very well together.  The editor has her eccentricities with  lipstick, and a grating voice, but by the end of  grows on you.  The model, who really doesn't want to be  a model, but wants to go to Paris to meet her hero of philosopher of empathic thinking.  And the photographer, who is all business, but is able to keep the model going and performing.  Over time, Jo falls in love with Dick.  Dick finally realizes he returns this love when Jo spends too much time with our philosopher friend.  Dick gives upon everything and is headed back to New York.

The music is by George and Ira Gershwin.  However the music is mostly forgetable.  What is not forgetable is the dance, by both Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn.  Also what is fantastic is the modeling by Audrey Hepburn.  She was a model before becoming a movie star

Movie Review: ***^The Charade (1963)

  This is a Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn movie.  It is well done for the most part but there are a couple times Cary Grant goes over the top with showering in his clothes and making funny faces.  I like the twists of the plot and the mystery.  Hepburn's husband is murdered.  But there is some money hid someplace, and his former partners in crime want it back.  It seems the CIA also wants it back.  She doesn't know who to trust.  That is what makes this movie intriguing.  I mildly recommend this movie.  It feels like a Hitchcock but is not.  Hepburn is very pleasing to the eyes.

Movie Review: ****Sabrina (1954)

This is a beautiful story.  The chauffer’s daughter (Audrey Hepburn) has been in love with the younger brother David (William Holden) of the rich employer's family since she was a child.  However he is a player.  So she goes to Paris to get away from the drama, and comes home a beautiful blossomed woman.  However the brother is now engaged, and this is a marriage to convenience to forge a partnership between two families and two companies.  However, as he is a player, he spies Sabrina for the first time, and wants to leave the arranged marriage behind and go with her.  Older brother, Linus (Humphrey Bogart) manages to take his place for a few days, while younger brother recuperates from an injury.  His initial goal is to send her back to Paris.  Slowing the affections change their loyalty.  But the older brother has always been the brother who has been responsible, and would never do anything to upset the family.
As I said a beautiful story, and Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogurt carry their parts well.  The difference in age is something they have to overcome as part of the story, and so does not get in the way of the story.

Movie Review: ****^Wait Until Dark (1967)

This is an excellent movie which features Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman, Susy Hendrix.  Somehow she becomes entangled in a drug smuggling case, when her husband brings home a doll from an overseas trip.  They are both innocent bystanders, but still the doll is wanted by the drug lord (Alan Arkin) who is willing to kill or do whatever he needs to do to get his heroin stash.  They have searched the house, but not found the doll.  They now plan to play a intricate con game to get Mrs. Hendrix to divulge the location of the doll.  The neighbor girl has borrowed the doll, not telling anyone.  This movie has lots of intrigue and danger.  Susie Hendrix seems so vulnerable.  I keep it with our Alfred Hitchcock movies, even though it is not.  This movie does not have anything inappropriate other than violence.  It is good for a scare.

Movie Review: ****War and Peace

This is the classic based on Leo Tolstoy novel and featuring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda.  It is an essay of Russian Society during Napoleon's invasion of Moscow.  It makes a statement about the horrors of war.  It is also a love story, which is finally put right in the end.  Any movie with Audrey Hepburn is great.  This movie adds Henry Fonda, and the historical character, Napoleon.  Napoleon's attitude about war is classic,  but in the end he loses to the Russians not fighting him, and just sitting him out, until he decides to return to France with his men.  Then the Russians send him off with an action against his rearguard as they retreat.

Henry Fonda portrays Pierre, who at the beginning is a bitter young man, illegitimate son of a wealthy Muscovite.  His father finally acknowledges him just before he dies, and Pierre inherits his estate.  He is friends of the family of Audrey Hepburn, whose younger brother joins the war in the end, and is killed.  Another friend of Pierre, who is also in the military, falls in love with the character of Audrey Hepburn, but break of the engagement due to social standing issues.  He is wounded in action, and near death.  Nursing him back to health, he and Audrey Hepburn over come the issues that kept them apart before.