Category: Romance

SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL

By Marc S. Sanders

I don’t get it. Why title a movie with the name of a popular song only to make the movie title seem arbitrary? Some Kind Of Wonderful is a rockin’ great song by Grand Funk Railroad that you turn the volume up on your car radio as you leave work on Friday afternoon. Maybe you get the bar patrons riled up on karaoke night. Some Kind Of Wonderful is also the name of a movie written by John Hughes that has no meaning or relevance to the song it’s named after. It’s as lacking in imagination as the film itself.

Why do you suppose John Hughes didn’t direct this film and left it for Howard Deutch to take over? Could it be that Hughes realized this script was nowhere near as insightful as The Breakfast Club or even Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?

The characters are positively boring in Some Kind Of Wonderful. In fact, they are so boring that they look bored with each other. They look half-awake when they are talking to one another. Unless, that’s how you look cool in the rebellious 1980s. I dunno. To me they all looked flat.

Eric Stoltz plays Keith. He’s a kid who avoids college discussions with his father (John Ashton) while pining over Amanda Jones (Lea Thompson), the popular girl who’s dating the popular jerk with the Corvette. We get to hear a song called Amanda Jones not once but THREE TIMES. Where’s the song Some Kind Of Wonderful, though? Why not just call the film Amanda Jones?

Unbeknownst to Keith, his tomboy best friend Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson) plays it cool, while carrying around her cool looking drumsticks, like she doesn’t love him when it couldn’t be more apparent. Keith is so unbelievably stupid that he can’t even detect the slightest crush that Watts has on him when she practices kissing him so he’ll be prepared for an upcoming date he has with Amanda. Now I’d buy this routine if Keith were at least playing dumb to Watts’ advances. However, Keith is not playing dumb. Keith is just dumb.

As a community theatre actor and playwright at times, even I follow at least a slight discipline of exploring character backgrounds. Watts and Keith are best pals yet I don’t recall one tender moment or discussion that even slightly recollects their history or friendship. Pretty In Pink offered plenty of moments that shaped the Molly Ringwald and Jon Cryer relationship. Not in Some Kind Of Wonderful, however. Every time Stoltz and Masterson meet up for a scene together it feels as if they never met each other before. They never look like they are familiar with one another and really know what makes the other tick. Are they acting with their stand in doubles?

I also was not so convinced of Keith’s attraction to Amanda. There’s nothing to this girl beyond Lea Thompson’s sultry looks. Granted, I recall having a day or even a month-long crush on a number of girls in high school simply based on appearance alone; girls who never gave me the time of day. Raging hormones naturally will do that to teenage boys but remember this is a movie. In a movie, I need to be shown why there is a crush. Not just told in a statement of dialogue.

Recently, I reviewed Can’t Buy Me Love. I didn’t like that film either. However, the popular girl in that film at least revealed a knack for poetry and a sudden interest in astronomy and an old airplane graveyard. The popular girl here only opts to go out with Keith to anger her jerk of a boyfriend. I don’t know anything about Amanda from beginning to end.

Keith only paints and draws images of Amanda. A talent for art is a springboard for sweet and sincere in a John Hughes movie, but it’s all Keith ever learns about Amanda. So it’s all we ever learn about Amanda. Great! You sketched a third picture of Lea Thompson. Sorry, but I already know what Lea Thompson looks like.

The date between Keith and Amanda tries to aim for cuteness and maybe some comedy. I say maybe because I’m not sure if the cast with Hughes and Deutch are looking for laughs. But see Masterson volunteers to be the limo driver complete with the hat and uniform, and drive the lovebirds around town. A limo uniform on a character can be funny like if Kramer in Seinfeld did it, or if it was one of the Three Stooges. Problem here is no one in this movie sees how funny it could be. So, it’s not funny. See how that works?

No one was at the wheel of this D grade fare teenage 80s flick. Beyond all that’s wrong with the story and characters and performances, ultimately again I ask, where is the song Some Kind Of Wonderful in the movie Some Kind Of Wonderful? If that doesn’t even occur to you, then I can’t have much faith the film will have any provocation of thought either…and it doesn’t!!!!!

CAN’T BUY ME LOVE

By Marc S. Sanders

I’m ashamed of myself. All the hours I wasted in my adolescence watching the 1980s teen flick, Can’t Buy Me Love. Now, having watched it again with my 12-year-old daughter, what was I thinking?

The overall problem with Can’t Buy Me Love is that literally every single character is drowning in depths of despicable shallowness. There’s not one redeeming character. Truly. I couldn’t stand to watch most of the film. Over and over again I asked myself what could I have been thinking? These are not likable people. Did I just repeatedly return to the film during Friday nights on HBO because I couldn’t take my eyes off actress Amanda Peterson?

Lawn mower nerd Ronald Miller (Patrick Dempsey) pays $1,000 to popular high school cheerleader, Cindi Mancini (Peterson) to be his girlfriend at the start of their senior year. The plan will be once Ronald’s reputation is established among the jocks and preppy valley girl cheerleaders, that Cindi and Ronald will break up. In other words, boost Ronald’s image so that he can live by that image. (I can’t believe I just clarified this movie with a sentence beginning with “In other words,…” A movie this stupid should not need additional clarification by means or words or even crayon sketches.)

It’s obvious what’s going to happen. Beware the idiot plot!!!! They fall in love, but both are too stupid to realize that they have fallen for one another. So, they are just cruel instead. Their friends are cruel too in their own superficialities.

I don’t find much to be proud of anymore with Can’t Buy Me Love. Maybe it reminds me too much of high school, which by and large I don’t look back on very fondly. High school in a film like this is all about impressing the greater mass with the car you drive, how much mousse you drown your hair in, or the sunglasses you wear.

John Hughes’ teen films looked at material with more substance like status quo and social class with a picture like Pretty In Pink or The Breakfast Club. No one was trying to impress anyone with the latest trendy look. The characters stayed secure in their appearance and yet found a personality to be attracted to, not an outfit. The challenge was in keeping to yourself while stepping into territory where you didn’t feel welcome.

Can’t Buy Me Love adheres to the observation that “he went from totally geek to totally chic.” Thanks for the limerick. I appreciated Pretty In Pink for a sobbing scene where the main character is embarrassed to show where she lives to the rich guy whose genuinely interested in her. There’s a consciousness to Pretty In Pink that Can’t Buy Me Love lacks.

If anything, Can’t Buy Me Love introduces us to The African Ant Eater Dance. So, as a plus, at least it’s got culture and diversity going for it.

OUT OF SIGHT

By Marc S. Sanders

In 1998, Elmore Leonard’s best-selling novel, Out Of Sight, was adapted by director Steven Soderbergh, where Federal Marshall Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) falls in lust with Bank Robber Jack Foley (George Clooney), which leads to ridiculous, albeit logical set ups as a high stakes diamond heist is planned along the way.

I know years after Steven Soderbergh’s film was released an ABC tv series based on the Sisco character was produced. That was a misfire. Simply because the beautiful, sexy and most importantly under appreciated and intuitive portrayal that Lopez mastered was a role that could have led to another great film franchise of sequels to come. Carla Gugino played author Leonard’s heroine in the tv show. If you are saying “Carla who?” then ‘Nuff said. Sisco belongs to Jennifer Lopez.

Lopez and Clooney have great chemistry amid gorgeous cinematography on location in sun filled Miami and snow blanketed Detroit. Soderbergh shoots a great scene midway through where the two characters, on opposite sides of the law, throw caution out the door as they seduce each other in front of a hotel window view boasting beautiful midnight blue sprinkled with falling snow. It is one cool and very hot scene.

Sisco is always a step ahead of Foley. Her problem arises when after being held hostage by him in the trunk of her car following his escape from prison…well, she just can’t resist him.

My apologies. Out Of Sight is a far better film than I could describe here thanks also to a boastful cast featuring Dennis Farina, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle (how many films has he done with Clooney?), Steve Zahn, Albert Brooks (simply great as a hairpiece wearing white collar criminal), Michael Keaton (two Batmans in a film for the price of one) and finally a master of cameos reserved for a smirk inducing final scene. Make an educated guess of who I could be talking about.

Lopez and Clooney should have done more films together over the years. They are as classic a couple as Tracey & Hepburn, Beatty & Dunaway, Hanks & Ryan or Gere & Roberts.

This was a gem of a movie I mistakenly found boring when I saw it in theatres. What was I thinking? On a second viewing, 20 years later, I laughed, smiled and just couldn’t take my eyes off it. It’s just great fun.

Without Out Of Sight, Soderbergh, Clooney and Company would probably never have made an Ocean’s 11. Check out what became before their more successful collaborations to come.

TOP GUN

By Marc S. Sanders

For a movie that focuses a lot on showers, men’s locker rooms and bare chested sweaty and chiseled volleyball players, it’s a wonder that it is called Top Gun.  Maybe the title has another indirect meaning to it, other than a moniker for a Navy fighter pilot school of the elite.  Maybe these guys are elite for a different reason.

The Tony Scott film that is supposedly about the top one percent, the best of the best, American fighter pilots in the Navy is arguably the most important film in Tom Cruise’s career.  It launched the actor into a superstar sensation that has hardly faltered since the movie’s release all the way back in 1986.  But is it a good movie?  Well, yes and no.

I’ve always loved Tony Scott’s filmmaking technique.  Sure, his sun-soaked film shots are constantly repeated.  He always relishes in enhancing the beaded glow of sweat drenching his actor’s faces, arms and chests.  It’s seen in nearly every moment of Top Gun, as well as other celebrated pictures like Crimson Tide, Beverly Hills Cop II and True Romance.  Orange sunlight blankets palm trees and beach lined streets.  Bar saloons and military headquarters are lit in sexy blues and greens.  It may lack originality after seeing a few of his films, but it just makes the movie all the more sexy. 

Tony Scott is also a well-versed director in action sequences.  He’ll get your pulse racing and Top Gun is the best example.  The fighter jet sequences in this film are masterful in editing, sound and speed.  It’s fantastic to see how the planes will twirl around and then shoot themselves straight up into a vertical trajectory in the sky and finally cut in on actors Tom Cruise, Anthony Edwards and Val Kilmer for a “WOO!” moment in the cockpit.  This stuff still holds up.

Yet, unlike other modern-day films that focus on cadets or students in our armed forces, Top Gun doesn’t concern itself with the discipline of what it takes to serve in the Navy.  This is the informal, class clown version of An Officer And A Gentleman.  You only need look as far as Tom Cruise’s character’s pilot call name, Maverick.  The name itself is a one-word thematic description of what you are watching.  So, the kid who learned to say “what the fuck” in Risky Business, went on to do daredevil flybys while disobeying orders.

Maverick’s real name is Pete Mitchell.  He has no family except that of his co-pilot, Goose (Anthony Edwards).  The disappearance of his Navy pilot father remains a mystery…because it is sexy and cool to have a mystery for your handsome hero in a film like this.  Call it DRAMATIC HEFT!!!! 

When Maverick and Goose get the opportunity to attend “Top Gun” – a fighter school specializing in training the best pilots in the world in aerial dog fighting – they are intent on getting their names on the plaque for the best of the best of THE BEST.  Competition comes in the other prettiest of the pretty boys with Iceman (Val Kilmer).  These are all great likable characters.  Yet, even when I saw this film at sleepaway camp at age 13, I couldn’t help but notice how distracted it gets with the abundance of erotic machoism on display here.  What would serve as dramatic dialogue in another film is presented in a steam room area allowing opportunity to see the male cast wrapped in towels around their waists with wet spiky blond and black hair.  It truly doesn’t matter what they are talking about in this scene.  When you are watching it, all that you are hearing is the sound of Charlie Brown’s unseen and indecipherable school teacher.  “Waa waa.  Waa waa waa waa!”

That’s not enough though.  The infamous volleyball scene keeps you awake.  I don’t care if you are hetero or homo or bi or pan or plus, the beach volleyball scene keeps you alert as one of Kenny Loggins’ many movie songs plays in accordance.  Tony Scott doesn’t just go for tossing the ball around.  Slow mo captions are offered of each guy just posing with their chiseled arms and chests.  You may not take your eyes off of it, but oh my…what does this have to do with the discipline of attending Navy fighter pilot school training?????

The romance is second to none.  Truly!  These days, people talk about Jack and Rose in Titanic or Ross and Rachel on Friends.  For me, it’s Maverick and Charlie (Kelly McGillis).  Cruise and McGillis really light up their scenes together.  It’s an absolute perfect pairing of sex appeal and it is really when Top Gun performs at its smartest level.  The dialogue is strongest during their scenes.  The romance isn’t rushed but nicely flirted with, and when tragedy strikes within the thin storyline of the overall film, the relationship goes in another supportive and appreciated direction.  When I was a kid, with hormones being discovered for the first time, my buddies and I would elbow each other during the midnight blue sex scene between McGillis and Cruise with the Oscar winning song “Take My Breath Away” from Berlin playing.  I look at this scene now and it is modern romance at a beautiful best.  A fantastic scene from Tony Scott. 

Charlie is the unexpected, well-versed contractor for the Navy giving counsel to the pilot students on how best to operate the jets.  In the 1980s, action blockbusters normally held the women as the barely dressed damsels to be rescued, and nothing more.  The female characters didn’t have brains and the only brawn to go around was saved for Princess Leia or Marion Ravenwood (Raiders).  Charlie is an exception though.  McGillis plays the character as someone who is aware that these testosterone-filled guys will regard her as a piece of meat, until they realize otherwise.  The irony of Top Gun is that the nearly all male cast, Cruise included, are the pieces of meat.  The one main female role is actually the brains of the whole operation.  McGillis was a marvelous actress back in the day.  Go look at Witness and The Accused to see what I mean.  With her help, Cruise elevates above the hokey dialogue of the Top Gun script. Kelly McGillis really could act well in almost anything.  I wish her career went further, honestly. 

Top Gun remains a mainstay in 1980s pop culture.  If the VH1 channel is doing a documentary on the decade of Madonna, Michael Jackson, parachute pants and neon pastels, Top Gun is also brought up in the mix with a close up of Tom Cruise’s toothy grin and his aviator sunglasses.  We were never watching Oscar winning material here, but somehow the film that introduced all of us to Tom Cruise still feels like a day at the beach with the twenty something boy toy in his tight jeans and leather bomber jacket riding his Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle at top speed or breaking the sound barrier in his fighter jet with his shiny navy-blue helmet on his head.  Top Gun and Tom Cruise demonstrated that it’s a party to serve in the Navy.  Why not?  Vietnam was behind us and the decade was not embroiled in war.  Join the Navy!!!!  It’s fun and you get to shower with the best-looking guys in the world.  You’ll even get to play volleyball with them and date your sexy flight instructor.

A lot of the dialogue and the storyline may sound like an adult, military interpretation of Saved By The Bell, but you can’t break away from the sexy allure of what Tony Scott with Cruise, Kilmer, McGillis and Edwards put on the screen.  It’s always been there and somehow a sequel was never made. 

Wait a second!  WHAT??????

ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (2005)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Miranda July
Cast: John Hawkes, Miranda July, Miles Thompson
My Rating: 8/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 82% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A lonely shoe salesman and an eccentric performance artist struggle to connect in this unique take on contemporary life.


There is a scene in Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July’s directorial debut, where Christine, an aspiring artist played by July herself, has submitted a videotape of her experimental video shorts to a museum curator who’s looking for examples of new art in a digital world.  At the end of the video, July addresses the camera and bemoans the fact that the curator will probably never watch the tape or get that far.  She pleads: “If you are watching this, then just call this number, the number you see on your screen, and say, ‘macaroni.’  …Just ‘macaroni’ and hang up.  No questions asked.”

In that moment, in the middle of a movie where I was never bored but constantly off-balance, I connected with Christine.  I’m guessing other people do, too, but I’m just guessing.  Who among us has never wanted validation or confirmation from someone, anyone, the world, that, yes, I see you and I hear you?  That right there is one of the reasons I do theatre, man.  I don’t always talk about it, but it’s there.  And I appreciated seeing that heartfelt emotion acted out in such a quirky and direct way.

That’s just one of the charms of this movie that defies description.  It’s a romantic dramedy where the two ostensible romantic leads can function around other people, but just barely.  There is also a subplot about two young boys who are bullied by two witless teenage girls.  How witless?  They thoughtlessly flirt with a much older man who starts leaving sexually graphic notes on his living room window so the girls can see them as they walk to school.  I won’t even tell you how their bullying of the two boys leads to the kind of sexual experimentation I devoutly hope doesn’t happen…but probably does more than I would care to admit.

Now, I’m making this sound like a Larry Clark movie (Kids, Bully), but it’s not.  The main story involves Christine and Richard (John Hawkes), a recently separated father (of the two young boys).  Richard works at a shoe store and is a hopeless romantic, not just when it comes to love, but life in general.  He tells his co-worker, “I want to be swept off my feet, you know?  I want my children to have magical powers.  I am prepared for amazing things to happen.”  But his idealism sometimes moves him to do and say odd things.  Near the beginning of the film, as he’s preparing to move out of his house and into a small apartment, he runs out to his front yard, gets his kids’ attention, and carefully and methodically uses lighter fluid to set his hand on fire.  Why?  His explanation (if I remember it correctly) is semi-reasonable, but I can’t help thinking there might have been a better way to demonstrate his thought process.

Christine is an aspiring artist who makes short experimental videos in which she provides voice-overs to still photographs.  In my mind, they are examples of how she might relate to people in real life if she weren’t so terrified of how other people might respond if she reaches out to them in person.  Her day job is as a taxi service for the elderly – sort of a proto-Uber service.  One day she drives a client to the shoe store where Richard works.  Richard notices small scars on Christine’s ankles.  She says her shoes rub her ankles, but all shoes do that because she has low ankles.  Richard looks her dead in the eye and says one of the best lines in the film: “You think you deserve that pain, but you don’t.”

Something passes between them, and the rest of the film, as far as these two are concerned, is about getting these two dysfunctional people together.  There are obstacles, of course.  A sick kid, an unexpected visit from the ex-wife, some examples of logic that seems rude but really isn’t.  It’s hard to explain.  But theirs is the thread that holds the rest of this weird film together.

And weird it is…but in that good way, you know?  Richard’s two sons are Robby, maybe 7 years old, and Peter, probably about 12 or 13, right when the hormones are kicking in.  In their off time, Peter visits an online chat room where he starts interacting someone who calls themselves “Untitled.”  (He calls himself “NightWarrior.”)  Their conversation gets racy.  If you think this is improper or immoral to show in a film, allow me to direct you to my own experiences on AOL chat rooms when I was that age.  (That’s one of the things the movie gets exactly right: the teenage boy’s curiosity/fascination about sex.)  Thing is, Peter is doing the chatting with Robby right there next to him.  Robby has no idea what he’s reading.  When Peter jokingly asks Robby for something dirty to type, Robby launches into this incredibly detailed scatological description of what he thinks is dirty.  At first, I was a little shocked, but then I started laughing because this is something else the screenplay gets exactly right.  Ask a really little kid to say the dirtiest thing they can think of, and this is the kind of thing you’re most likely to hear.

The movie is full of little moments like that.  The main love story is tooling along, and suddenly a store-bought goldfish is left on top of someone’s car in a baggie.  We’re watching Christine agonize over whether to call Richard or not, and then those two teenage girls from before persuade Peter, the teenage son, to let them give him what they call a “Jimmy Ha Ha.”  It’s exactly what you’re thinking.  Why do they do this?  Because they want to settle an argument over which of them can do it better.  Where were those girls when I was in high school???

And don’t even get me started about what happens when Robby, the youngest boy, starts posing as NightWarrior and chats with Untitled on his own.  This exceedingly weird situation, which I can honestly say I’ve never seen in any other movie before, leads to a moment when Untitled asks to meet NightWarrior in person.  The payoff of this story thread is sure to divide audiences, but I found it both hilarious and oddly touching.

If I’m making the movie sound like a mixed bag, well, it is.  But nothing ever goes too far in the taste department.  The perv who leaves graphic notes on his window has an interesting reaction when his bluff is called.  The Untitled/NightWarrior stuff comes to a proper close, in my opinion.  And Richard and Christine?  Well…what kind of romantic dramedy ends with the lovers NOT getting together, right?

Bottom line: Me and You and Everyone We Know is constantly engaging, constantly weird, but never boring, never conventional.  It held my interest for 90 minutes.  That’s more than I can say for most romantic dramedies involving poop jokes and “Jimmy Ha Ha’s.”

NOTTING HILL

By Marc S. Sanders

Notting Hill written by Richard Curtis (Love, Actually) and directed by Roger Michell is a pleasant surprise of a romantic comedy. It’s not a perfect film but it certainly loves every one of its quirky supporting characters, as well as its two straight romantic leads played by Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant.

Grant plays Will Thacker who lives in the Notting Hill district of London where every proprietor is a charming little shop of some form or other; a quaint street where merchants appear on the sidewalks during the weekends selling their art or homemade jams or coffee products. Will owns a travel book shop located across the street from his flat that is whimsically recognized by its big blue front door. His wife left him for another man and now he’s relegated himself to living with a roommate called Spike (character actor Rhys Ifans doing a British equivalent of Cosmo Kramer, Seinfeld’s neighbor).

One day the superstar celebrity Anna Scott (Roberts) simply strolls into Will’s store. They have a quiet moment and he sells her a travel book about Turkey that he didn’t recommend she purchase. Moments later they run into each other down the street when Will spills orange juice all over Anna. From there, a meet cute relationship begins to unfold. It’s not so simple for the pair though as Anna’s enormous celebrity is hard to negotiate; hard for Anna, not hard for Will.

Anna is at ease when she can have a quiet dinner to celebrate Will’s sister’s birthday with his friends or when she can escape her turbulent life of gossip magazines and paparazzi by taking shelter at Will’s flat, even if grungy looking Spike walks in on her taking a bath.

I like Notting Hill. However, the quiet moments shared between Grant and Roberts sometimes carry on too long. Oh my gosh!!!! Will someone say something already????? Hugh Grant has made characters that trip over their words and stumble with what to say into a master craft. Julia Roberts is one actress that a camera loves especially when she’s distressed. A crying moment in any one of her films will milk the scene for every blush, or glassy eye or tear and whisper she can offer. She’s a terrifically skilled actress in almost any film she does. Eventually, we have to move on from all of this though. My patience for some scenes were just running way too long for me at times. Kiss already!!!! Make love already!!!! Scream at each other already!!!!

Fortunately, there’s much escape to be had with the supporting cast, especially Ifans as Spike who is the most absent minded, lovable, dirty underwear wearing and sloppy prig imaginable. Emma Chambers is just as fetching with her scarlet pigtailed haircut as Will’s sister, Honey. Tim McInnery, Gina McKee, James Dreyfus and Hugh Bonneville round out this madcap collection. The birthday dinner party is a great scene for this ensemble as a comedic but relaxed chemistry blends nicely during a competition to see who is suffering the most to earn the last brownie on the dessert plate. The group is unsure how to include a movie star like Anna in their simplicity but Julia Roberts pulls off a trick that even had me fooled. Simply put, for the whole cast, there’s just that much more life and vibrancy when they are all together and it’s not just relegated to only Roberts and Grant in a scene.

Another special moment occurs later when the couple have split up once again. To depict time fleeting by, Roger Michell offers up a transition of Will wearing one outfit but walking through the hustle and bustle of Notting Hill as the weather and seasons seamlessly change all around him from sunlight to rain to snow and spring sunlight again. You even get a glimpse of Honey starting a flirtatious relationship at the beginning of the sequence and by the time it’s over a minute later Honey is breaking up with the guy. It’s a wonderful moment of wordless narration to show Will’s struggle with moving on as time continues to pass by. More importantly, it allows the titled setting to be a character of its own. This is a great example of showing a lovesick character unable to move on while life has no patience to wait for him to catch up.

I like Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts whether it’s in Notting Hill or one of their many other fine movies. I can’t deny the chemistry they have in this film. It works. I only wanted a little more life to the material that was handed to them. Still, Notting Hill is charming and simply a very sweet romantic comedy.

PETER IBBETSON (1935)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Henry Hathaway
Cast: Gary Cooper, Ann Harding, Ida Lupino
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: No rating

PLOT: A successful architect who longs for the love of his childhood friend is delighted to discover that the Duchess who just hired him is in fact his long-lost beloved.  This being melodrama, there is of course much more to the story.


[SPOILERS FOLLOW]

Peter Ibbetson plays like a long-lost Dickens novel, full of melodramatic flourishes and convenient plot contrivances designed to play the audience like a grand piano.  Is it shameless?  Yes.  Is it maudlin?  Yes.  Do I normally like movies like this?  No.  But there is something about this film and its story that got around my defenses and into my heart and soul.  I’ll try to elaborate on that as much as I can, but I don’t know how well I’m going to do.  Good luck.

The story opens, as the title card helpfully explains, in the middle of the last century, which would make it somewhere around the 1850s.  Somewhere in a well-heeled French countryside, two children from neighboring British families play and quarrel with each other, Mimsey and Gogo.  (I am not making that up, though why parents felt the need to inflict those names on their children is utterly beyond me.)  Gogo, the boy, cruelly teases the girl, Mimsey, who nevertheless gives as good as she gets.  Unfortunately, Gogo’s mother dies after a long illness, and when a distant uncle arrives to take Gogo back to England, he realizes he doesn’t want to leave his precious Mimsey.  Together they try to run away and hide, but it’s no use.  The sight of poor Mimsey weeping in the branches of a tree as Gogo is finally taken away was one of the scenes that started to chip away at my armor of cynicism.

Time passes, and Gogo changes his name to Peter and takes his mother’s last name, Ibbetson.  He becomes a successful architect and a valuable asset for his employer.  (In a very Dickensian touch, Peter’s employer is blind…wholly unnecessary to the plot, but that specificity makes it feel even more realistic amid all the other melodrama.)  Peter is successful, yes, but he is unhappy.  He is a bachelor, and when a very pretty girl more or less hits on him at a museum back in France, he takes her for a drink as a matter of courtesy, not out of any real attraction.  His heart still belongs to the lost love of his childhood, you see.  Mimsey is the touchstone of his past, his Rosebud, his green light at the end of the pier, and she will not be easily eradicated.

Initially, I was unsympathetic to the adult Peter.  How can anyone get on with their life if they’re stuck in the past?  It didn’t work for Kane or Gatsby.  If there’s anything the last thirty or so years of my life has taught me, it’s that the past will only weigh you down if you let it.  I’m not suggesting one should literally forget history, but had I been one of Peter’s associates in the film, I would have been constantly reminding him about being grateful for the present rather than bemoaning the mistakes or regrets of the past.  That way lies madness.

Before I get into more story details, I should mention the style of the film and the acting, which is so mannered and stylized that it feels as if it were a silent film that had a soundtrack added as an afterthought.  Gary Cooper may be a legend, but in this film…let’s be blunt, he is no Cary Grant.  Every sentence feels as if it’s been dragged out of him by way of torture.  His charisma is based solely on his imposing height and his dashing good looks, NOT his speech.  (Sorry, I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em.)  The women are not much better acting-wise, though the Duchess of Towers does have some interesting moments.  However, one of the movie’s highlights are the cinematography and subtle visual effects, especially in the late stages of the film.  Look at that scene involving the peculiar qualities in the bars of the jail cell and explain to me 100% how that was accomplished.  It’s so understated and effective that it took me completely by surprise.  I believe it would raise eyebrows with TODAY’S audiences.

I mention all of this about the style and my mindset because I believe that it all contributes to the reaction I had to the film, at which I’m still perplexed.

One day, Peter is contracted to rebuild the stables of an aristocratic family, the Duke and Duchess of Towers.  When Peter first meets Mary, the Duchess, he experiences an unexplainable connection.  His contract requires him to live in the Towers house for several months.  One day they share a conversation and discover that they shared a dream.  This isn’t a case of two people dreaming about the same thing coincidentally.  They actually shared a dream, Inception style, but without the machinery.  How can this be?

By now, any breathing audience member has already deduced that the Duchess is Mimsey and they are destined for each other.  Alas, Peter and Mary are not as quick on the uptake as we are, and their moment of recognition is delayed until after the peevish Duke confronts them at the dinner table, in a conversation laden with Hays-Code-era double-speak.  “Well, Mr. Ibbetson, are you to be congratulated again?” the Duke asks.  Later, during a second confrontation, the Duke points a gun at Peter and Mary and explains that they will not make love behind his back.  He raises his gun and says, “Get into your lover’s arms.”  Whoa.  Daring stuff for 1935.  It’s during this second confrontation that something goes horribly wrong, and Peter is sent to jail for life.

MORE melodrama?  Hasn’t this movie already had more than its fair share?  Children tearfully separated?  An equally tearful reunion?  Outrageous coincidences?  Shared dreams, for crying out loud?  Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

It’s in the film’s third act, when our hero is in prison, that Peter Ibbetson really started to get to me at some primal level.  Peter and Mary, after being reunited against all odds, are now separated even more cruelly than before.  Peter is so distraught he goes on a hunger strike, chained to his “bed,” which is little more than a wide wooden beam.  (Look at it from a certain angle and he might almost appear to be on a cross, but don’t worry, it’s not that kind of movie.)  When one of his fellow prisoners makes a joke at Mary’s expense, Peter goes a little crazy and starts to throttle him.  Miles away, at the same time, Mary suddenly senses something is wrong.  In the jail, guards use force that’s a tad too excessive to restrain Peter, and at the same exact moment Mary screams.  The two are connected in a mystical way that transcends walls or distance.  They continue to share dreams in which they laugh and walk and talk as if nothing bad had ever happened.  In one dream, he points to a castle in the distance that he has built for his beloved.  I was reminded instantly of the scenes in Inception where Cobb and his wife Mal build entire cities for themselves in their own shared dream.

I’ve already given away too much, far too much than I usually care to.  As much as I want to, I can’t describe the one scene that got me to literally yell, “NO!” at the TV screen.

What fate eventually befalls Peter and Mary, I leave for you to discover.  What remains for me is to try once again to summarize how I felt after the movie was over.  Intellectually, I can see its shortcomings.  The acting is wooden, despite some pretty sharp dialogue.  The music is overwhelmingly romantic and dramatic, commenting on a lot of action unnecessarily, as was the custom back then.  There are one or two odd cuts.  But on an emotional level, the experience of watching Peter Ibbetson was like watching one of Shakespeare’s tragedies.  The only other movies that ever made feel these precise emotions, although not to the exact same degree, are The Remains of the Day and Atonement.  If you know those movies, you know what I’m talking about.

The movie’s final shot is as shamelessly manipulative as these things get.  It’s unabashed romanticism at its best AND its worst.  But you know what?  This movie earns it, and it works.

THE LOST CITY

By Marc S. Sanders

Sandra Bullock’s film The Lost City is nothing more than rollicking fun at the movie theater.  A popcorn movie.  You can simply focus on gorging yourself with endless amounts of popped kernels and large fizzy drinks and you’ll never find yourself lost in a complex plot.  It’s a screwball adventure in the same vein of Romancing The Stone.  What I appreciate is that it is not a duplicate blueprint of Romancing The Stone.  Maybe just the opening scene, but no matter.

Bullock is Loretta, a reclusive romance novelist, who knows that her books are nothing more than cheesy pulp material to the umpteenth degree.  Her agent Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) keeps a positive attitude as she encourages a book tour to promote Loretta’s newest installment in a series that follows the adventures of Loretta’s fictional swashbuckler.  That hero is preserved on the covers of her novels in the image of fashion model, Alan (Channing Tatum) – a Fabio inspiration.  Alan dons the gorgeous blond locks wig with the beefcake chest and the fans seem to go wild for him more than they do for Loretta’s work.  Even the glittery purple jumpsuit with stiletto heels that Loretta dons for an appearance at a book fair doesn’t deter the screaming fans away from Alan’s muscular build and chiseled chin.

When Loretta is captured by a spoiled brat of a villain known as Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe), she finds herself having to research the location of a lost city on a remote island rumored to possess treasures beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.  Somehow, within Loretta’s fiction she implied the actual location of this place.  Abigail needs her to delve even further towards the destination.

This all sounds cliché.  It is, actually.  So what!

What saves The Lost City is the screwball comedic approach to the film.  Bullock and Tatum are nearly twenty years apart in age.  Yet, they make a great pair in the same way that Hepburn and Grant did in Bringing Up Baby.  I could care less about the actual lost city and whatever treasure was there.  The symbols etched on an old piece of parchment that Loretta attempts to decipher never mattered to me.  Two days after seeing the movie, I don’t even remember what the lost city revealed when they eventually got there.  I did like the endless pratfalls of Tatum and Bullock, however. 

Channing Tatum looks like the adventurer of a romance novel.  Yet, he’s nothing more than a pretty boy or a “mimbo” as Jerry Seinfeld might describe him.  He’s actually got a crush on Loretta and upon determining that she’s been kidnapped, he recruits the legendary problem solver Jack Trainer (who could only be encapsulated in the form of a gorgeously blond, tan and muscular Brad Pitt) to rescue Loretta.  It’s important to Alan, though, that he gets recognized as the savior.  So, he kind of learns as he goes. 

Adventures in the jungle abound.  There are bad guys on motorcycles.  Guns, of course.  Fires within Alastair’s luxury SUV. Rock climbing.  Rivers with leeches.  Dark caverns and on and on and on.  Yeah.  I’ve seen this all before.  Again, I say so what!  It’s just a fun time at the movies that brought me back to the fast-paced escapades found in the 1980’s films I grew up on.  Yet, it has its own spin thanks to the relationship of Alan and Loretta.

Daniel Radcliffe and his beard are also great characters.  It’s a nice departure from the shoe horned role that’ll never leave him as a certain boy wizard who will not be named here.  He just brings out his fun bratty side.  His beard seems to wink along with him.

A better side story could have come with Da’Vine Joy Randolph though.  As the agent goes from one traveling step to the next as she attempts to find Loretta herself, Randolph just doesn’t look comfortable in the role with her sky-blue pant suit and big breasted physique that is intentionally in your face.  Where’s the slapstick that should be accompanying her?  She’s specifically made up to look like diva luxury and you’re waiting for one disaster after another to befall her. Beyond having to fly on a puddle jumper plane carrying farm animals, she simply survives her trek unscathed.  Either this storyline should have been excised all together, or it should have been rewritten to be just as silly as what Bullock and Tatum are delivering.  A flop in the mud or a slip in the river would have helped this plotline. 

The Lost City is just a cute film for Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum to look…well…cute together, and in a world where celebrities are slapping each other silly on live television, isn’t this a much better escape on a Saturday afternoon?

BULL DURHAM

By Marc S. Sanders

How Susan Sarandon did not even get nominated for an Oscar for Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham, I’ll never know. Shelton writes the character of the lustrous, Annie Savoy with grace, wisdom and silky sex appeal. It remains one of the best female characters to ever appear on a screen and no one else could have played the part other than Sarandon.

Shelton’s sensational script opens with Annie’s declaration that she believes in the “church of baseball” and from there it waxes poetic on the sport’s religion and traditions as Annie uses her charm to seduce the Durham Bulls’ newest talent, dim witted pitcher Eppy Calvin “Nuke” Laloosh (Tim Robbins) leaving the team’s experienced catcher Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) wanting more. That is until Annie realizes that she’s the one who wants more.

Davis is recruited to groom Nuke for the big leagues. Nuke has got a million dollar fast ball arm but he “…fucks like he pitches. Sort of all over the place.” Crash is the frustrated player with talent but the sun is setting on his opportunity for the big leagues. Dumb Nuke has a future that just doesn’t seem fair to Crash. Annie is no help when she chooses Nuke over Crash to hook up with for the season.

Shelton explores so many dimensions in his script. It does not solely focus on the three primary characters. The screenplay stirs in a mixture of what it’s like to serve on a minor league team with bats and gloves that are cursed, the urge for a rain out game or what present to get Bobby and Millie for their wedding. A call to the mound might settle some of these things.

Shelton directs his script with a very natural approach. Watch Crash and Annie flirt in a batting cage. Costner and Sarandon don’t even flinch as the balls whiz between them. Baseball is a part of these characters. They live and breathe baseball and they relish sex.

Shelton’s last 15 minutes of film offer a celebration of sexual release that appears pleasant, fun and somewhat religious as the chemistry between Costner and Sarandon remains strong. They rattle the whole house it seems and the kitchen will never be the same.

Robbins is great with his idiocy. He wasn’t as well known when this film was released in 1988. His surprise appearance of stupidity is so lovable and welcome. When he tries to think he gets himself in trouble. When he listens to his coaches, Annie and Crash, he excels. The pains he goes through upon their advice is ridiculously hilarious. Don’t forget to breathe through your eyelids, Nuke.

I also gotta recognize Robert Wuhl and Trey Wilson as the managers of the team. They are hilarious but not overt. Wuhl is great as he bellows out encouraging but incomprehensible cheers from the dugout. Wilson looks on with tired facial expressions.

This cast is invested in the cloth of America’s pastime. They know the batting averages. They read the signs. They play for the crowds. It’s as if Shelton moseyed into the town of Durham, North Carolina, put his camera up and watched how another season all played out. His lens could have been working with a documentary mindset.

Bull Durham is one of the best scripts ever written full of brilliant one liners and philosophies that I might not entirely understand what any of it is referencing. Yet when Annie or Crash carry on, I can’t help but suddenly get interested.

Bull Durham is the best baseball film ever made performed by an outstanding cast led by a director with a clear, wide-open vision.

Play ball!!!

KATE & LEOPOLD

By Marc S. Sanders

Fish out of water stories will always be told. Kate & Leopold directed by James Mangold reminded me of the New York City based romantic comedy Big, which was a better variation on that formula.

In Kate & Leopold, Hugh Jackman portrays the second title character also known as the Duke of Albany in the year 1876, and apparently the eventual inventor of the elevator. One night, he pursues a curious fellow who is attending an evening ball designed to find a bride for Leopold. The man runs and Leopold gives chase into the rain where they find themselves hanging from scaffolding of what will become the Brooklyn Bridge, designed by-you guessed it-Leopold. The moment of suspense ends with Leopold accompanying the fellow named Stuart (a very miscast Liev Schrieber) into present day New York; a New York unfamiliar to Leopold where manners of grace and elegance have gone out the window and you’re expected to pick up your dog’s poop following a walk.

Let’s get this out of the way, quick. Stuart has uncovered time travel. How does it work? Who cares? Move along.

Stuart’s ex-girlfriend and downstairs neighbor is played by the late 20th century staple resident of the Big Apple movies, Meg Ryan. She’s the Kate of the film’s title. Just like other romantic comedies of this nature, Kate is tense and stressed and trying to land a big account where she’s looking for the right spokesperson for a new butter spread commercial. You think Leopold, in his signature 19th century outfit, may fit the bill? I’m thinking you guessed correctly.

What else do you think happens? Yeah. You’re right. Kate and Leopold start to fall in love.

I grew tired of Kate & Leopold for a few reasons. There’s a side story meant for some slapstick kind of humor where Stuart, who is the “Doc Brown” of this picture, falls down an elevator shaft only to be relegated to a mental ward where he struggles to get in touch with the leads to explain what must be done from here. C’mon!!! A patient in a hospital should be able to make a lousy phone call.

Two, as Leopold romances Kate as well as coaches her brother (Breckin Meyer) in the ways of romance, how does he manage to find the financial resources for a violinist or the decor he uses to uphold his manners of refine? Reader, if I’m occupying myself with these trivial questions, then what do you think might be wrong here?

Chemistry!

Most importantly, the chemistry between Ryan and Jackman seems way off. I didn’t believe for a second these two were falling in love with one another. They speak two different variations of English and while Leopold is a man of great chivalry, I never found a moment in the film where he would be captivated by the modern-day Kate. What did Kate do anywhere in this picture that swept him off his feet? For Kate, when did she fall in love with Leopold? She’s hardly giving him the time of day and he’s really only a convenient opportunity to rescue her big account, but that’s not love for me. That’s not romance. That’s, at best, discovery. Like finding the next big talent or gimmick. If this is what love is, then who fell in love with Mr. Clean and how many years is the Jolly Green Giant married now? Did the Kool-Aid Man find his betrothed when he smashed through her kitchen wall?

In Big, director Penny Marshall found opportunities for the Elizabeth Perkins character to stop and look at the 12-year-old character version of Tom Hanks. Because she stopped and looked, she then still felt comfortable in her own skin. Hanks’ kid like character develops a first crush. A first crush may not be love, but to a 12-year-old, nothing is more confusing or self-occupying.

In Mangold’s film which he co-wrote with Steve Rogers, Leopold admits early on that he’s never been in love. Where’s the weight of his emotions here? I never uncovered those moments between the characters of Kate & Leopold, while a film like Big devoted a wealth of attention to it.

As well, like I said earlier, I could not take my mind off figuring out how Leopold is paying for this elegant rooftop dinner. Where did he get the money, in New York City, to pay for all this?

Know what Tom Hanks did in Big? He got a job!