John Wayne Movie Review: ***^Jet Pilot (1957)

 This is a cold war movie of spy versus spy.  It appears a Russian pilot, Lt. Anna Marladovna Shannon/Olga Orlief (Janet Leigh) is defecting to the U.S.  Col. Jim Shannon (John Wayne) is assigned to her to get information from her.  At the same time she is getting information from the Americans and feeding it back to Russia.  She even gets some plans.  Orlief and Shannon marry in an attempt to keep her from being deported.  It is discovered she is actually a spy.  Now the opposite happens, Shannon flies her to Siberia and he defects.  However he is also working as a spy for the Americans.  When Orlief learns that the intend to trade Shannon to the Americans, but not until they destroy his memory with drugs, they do the defecting rescuing thing a third time.

Movie Review: ****Psycho (1960 Alfred Hitchcock)

I thought this movie would make a good Halloween movie to watch, and let the scary music play loud enough to great the trick or treaters.  None of them noticed. 
This is the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic.  A young woman takes off with $40,000 from her employer, and picks the wrong hotel.  I didn't realize that the murder happened so early in the movie, and the rest of the movie is about finding her killer.  This movie is rated R because of the murder in the shower scene; however it would not be rated so severely today. 
Hitchcock does know how to tell a story, get an isolated rural area, and add someone who is criminally insane, and you have all the right ingredients for a scary time.  Janet Leigh stars as the victim and Anthony Perkins as the killer.

Movie Musical Review: ****Bye Bye Birdie 1963

Bye Bye Birdie;  This is the original made for t.v. version which stars Dick Van Dyke as Albert, the song writer who has recruited Birdie to sing his song before he goes to the Army, as he has been drafted.  He wants to use this as leverage with his mother, to prove he is a success and can marry his secretary, Rosie, (Janet Leigh).  This version includes the actual Ed Sullivan playing himself, and Birdie is suppose to kiss a girl on national television.  However, the Russian ballet is puts a damper on their dream, as this is to play instead of Birdie.  Somehow they get a speed potions (seems like not a good example of doing drugs) into the conductors drink, and he conducts the ballet at an accelerated speed, making it a comedy routine rather than a ballet.  It finishes early and Birdie will perform “One last Kiss, Oh baby one last kiss.”  This is a classic.  Things are looking good, until it all goes bad.  Jesse Pearson plays Birdie, Paul Lynde the father of the daughter to be kissed, and Ann-Margeret the girl to be kissed.

Movie Review: ****^Hitchcock

Hitchcock is a 2011 movie starring Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock and Helen Mirren as his wife Alma Reville.  It also features Scarlett Johansson as the actress Janet Leigh.  I watched it through Netflix DVD.

I found this movie very entertaining.  It is about the making of Psycho.  I was fascinating with the making of a film, and even more fascinated with Hitchcock and his wife, coming together to make a triumph.  They took a great risk with this movie, as Hitchcock could not find financial backing, and had to back the movie himself.  There were so many nuances to the making of the film that at times it seemed the project was going to fall apart. There was dealing with the studio, dealing with the censors, and dealing with personal pressure at home because of they mortgaged their home to make the film.

Overlapping this is the relationship between Hitchcock and his wife Alma.  Hitchcock determines she is having an affair, and this effects his work on the movie.  However when he collapses from exhaustion, Alma comes up to keep them going and to keep production from falling too far behind, or to keep the cost overruns from being too great. Alma was not having a physical affair, but perhaps one of loyalty as she was helping a friend write a book.

In the end, this movie was Hitchcock’s greatest success, even surpassing “North by Northwest.”  I am putting this movie in my motivational movies.  It shows what can be accomplished with a dream, determination and resolve.  

I don't think youngsters would appreciate this movie.