Movie Review: ****^In the Heat of the Night (1967)

This is the movie with the famous lie of Sidney Portier, "The call me Mr. Tibbs."  Also in his roll as the police of chief, Rod Steiger, won the Oscar for best actor.  The lead was shared by Porter and Steiger.  Steiger was a southern chief of police, in a town with Jim Crow laws and with rampant racism including violence.  Potier's character just happens to be visiting when there is a murder.  He is a homicide detective from Philadelphia.  The chief on several occasions arrests the wrong man.  Potier has to keep digging.  Even he was intent on looking for the murderer in the wrong place.  However in he end, while be just by a mob after him, he is able to get to the right man, by following who is paying for the abortion.

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: ****^True Grit (1969, John Wayne)

This movie is a true classic.  John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn won an Oscar.  Glen Campbell stars as Texas Ranger La Boeuf and also sings the theme song.  And Kim Darbie as Mattie Ross, whose father has been murdered, round out the team.  You have to admire the grit of all three of the characters going after the murderer Tom Chaney.  Chaney is hooked with a bunch of other bad men, lead by Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall).  Cogburn and Mattie Ross are not a match made in heaven, but find each other paired together on a dangerous journey into Indian Territory.  Cogburn is a rough man, and drinks too much.  Mattie too is a stubborn person.  La Boeuf is interested in Chaney for a previous murder in Texas, and for reward money.  Wayne's vinegar and sauce won him the Oscar, but Darbie could just have easily been nominated.  Her character is very strong.  This is Wayne at his best, and a great movie.  In the end it is La Boeuf who saves everyone after Mattie falls into a rattle snake pit.  Oh I hate rattle snakes.

Movie Review: *****The Sound of Music

This is one of my favorite movies of all time.  I saw it when it first came out at a theater in Denver, where we had traveled for my father's graduation with his Masters in Library Science from the University of Denver.  It was at a big theater in Denver.  And what a presentation from the "Sound Of Music" in the Austrian Alps, and Maria running full speed to make the bell, which she fails miserable.
This show has many high-lights.  My favorite is the Mother Abyss singing "Climb Every Mountain to Maria, telling her to face her challenges rather than run from them:
Climb every mountain,
Search high and low,
Follow every byway,
Every path you know.

Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow,
'Till you find your dream.

A dream that will need
All the love you can give,
Every day of your life
For as long as you live.

Don't you just love the two nuns confessing "I have sinned" as she shows the Reverand mother the car parts, as the von Trapp family makes its way over the mountain. 

Movie Review: ****Of Mice and Men (1939)

This is the 1939 movie version of John Steinbeck's book which was published in 1937.  There are a couple things I like better in this movie than the Gary Sinise John Malkovich version.  And there are a couple things that I don't like as well.  This version gives much more focus to the situation of Curly's wife.  It is interesting that she is not named.  She is a non-person.  To Curly she is a pretty possession he has to look out for.  He spends much of his energy accusing others flirting with his wife.  She for her part longs to go to the movies, but Curly goes to town with his friends.  Apparently she has no mother-in-law, and father-in-law does not like her to play music.  In the end she does not have a life.  This movie portrays her being kicked out at the end, and she comes back to get her puppy.  As for Curly this movie leaves out the bit about using Vaseline on his hands.  However he does tangle with Lenny, and gets his hand smashed.  I like the look of the splint they put on his hand.  I don't care as much for this Lenny as John Malkovich.  He leaves a sense of pretending to Lenny, rather than actually being the character.  I like Crooks in this version, with his twisted back, and bitterness that he can't associate with the other men because of the color of his skin.  I also really like Candy, his reactions to his dog being shot, and then is having hope of getting a place with Lenny and George.
The ending is done is in good taste, showing George and his reaction, rather than the physical brutality of the bullet hitting Lenny in the head.  This is a very good version, and it being so soon to the release of the book, leaves me to think John Steinbeck had an active role.  Steinbeck did write a theatrical version of this book.

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: ****Of Mice and Men

After reading the book, I decided to watch the movie.  To see some of this acted out, can be a bit disconcerting, so it has a PG-13 rating.  For the most part it doesn't show a lot of blood, but it does show violence.  This movie is available on Netflix Instant.  It stars Gary Sinise as George and John Malkovich as Lenny.
It is very true to the story, but it starts with the later flashback.  Lenny gets in trouble touching a woman's soft dress, and being accused of attempted rape.  A posse goes after George and Lenny, but they escape in a ditch.  They then show up close to a farm by Soledad, and are hired to help with the barley harvest. 
Soledad, loneliness, and that is what John Steinbeck portrays, is lonely, insecure people.  It shows us the boss' son Curley who is lonely, wishes he were bigger, is over jealous his new wife might  not be faithful, and is controlling and abuses her.  We see his wife, who is also lonely, not allowed to talk with anyone because of her husband's loneliness, the boss who gives the Black farm hand "hell" when anything goes wrong.  Candy, (Ray Walston) who has his old mutt for company.  However his mutt is blind, and stinks, and the other bunk mates don't like it and convince him to have the dog put down.  Carlson uses his pistol.  Slim, the foreman, who really doesn't have anyone, and the other ranch hands are all working to get their $50 so they can take it into town on blow it on beer and whores.  The saddest case is Crooks, the stable hand.  His back is crooked from having been kicked in the back by a horse.  He is African American, and has his own room, but is not allowed with the other men, and only has books to read.  He is lonely too, books aren't enough when you are aching for company.  We never see the boss' wife, or Curly's wife might have had a friend.  As such she wanders among the farm hands looking for companionship.
In this mess of people, Lenny, George and Candy make a plan to get away.  It just might work.  Candy has some money from his losing his hand, and saving up.  With the pay at the end of the month, they could swing getting their own place, where they could live and support each other.  If they could just make it to the end of the month.  This movie lacks some of the lines I liked from the movie.  It does have a similar ending; except George isn't met by the farm hands at the end, but sneaks off in a cargo train.

Movie Reviews: Musical, ****Oliver

Oliver!:  I have always enjoyed Oliver.  It is available through Netflix Instant.  This movie won for the Oscar for best film as well as best direction.  Lionel Bart wrote the musice and lyrics.  When I was young I read the Charles Dickens book.  The songs I especially like are: "Boy For Sale," "Who Will Buy," and "As long as He Needs Me," "I think I Better Think it Out Again," "Where is Love" and "Oom-Pah-Pah."
This is a tragic tale which is a lesson about partner abuse.  Abuse is progressive, with the final progression one of murder and death; just as this movie portrays.  Nancy (Shani Wallis) says she will stay with him as long as he needs her.  She stays too long.  The other theme is that if you stay in the criminal environment too long, it too will eventually take you in.  Fagin is well done, singing, character, acting.  Ron Moody was nominated for an Oscar for this performance.  Jack Wild, who played the Artful Dodger, was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar.  It also received a special Oscar for best choreography.  I imagine this is based partly on the dance of the boys to "Come Back Soon" as well as the large street numbers, "Consider Yourself a Friend" and "Who Will Buy."
This is a story of great tragedy.  How else could such a story end.
I would have scored this movie higher, but in reviewing the case, I discovered that Oliver (Mark Lester) did not sing his own songs but the daughter of the musical director Kathe Green.  Based on that I scored it lower.  Good family movie, but I remember as a child having issues with the accidental hanging at the end.

Movie Review: ****Bang the Drum Slowly,

  I enjoyed this movie more than I thought I would. It is a Paramount film from 1973, which I watched through Netflix DVD.  It stars Robert De Niro and Michael Moriarty.  It is about two ball players, working through the inevitable death of one.  The catcher, who has always been a journeymen has cancer and Hodgkin's disease.  The pitcher, is a star, and insists he stay on the team as part of his contract.  The coach is left with a mystery, and finally uncovers it.  The actor, Vincent Gardenia, who portrays the coach won an Oscar.  But the story behind this is the friendship between the two main characters, and the reaction after the year is over and they have won the pennant, but the catcher ends up in the hospital after the clinching game, and passes away during the off season.  He is almost forgotten at the end.  The song "Streets of Loredo is featured, being sung by another catcher.

We beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly,
And bitterly wept as we bore him along.
For we loved our comrade, so brave, young and handsome,

My only complaint is the season had teams from both leagues, which made it less realistic.  But of course it was fiction.