Henry Saw: Some recomended films...

Recently watched some movies that were recommended to me by people I trust...with varying success...




The Petrified Forest:

This was recommended to me by my Uncle Craig. It's a 1936 film based on a play by Robert E. Sherwood. It stars Bette Davis, Leslie Howard, and Humphrey Bogart. The play and film are set in a small diner in the desert. Howard plays a poor writer who meets an infatuating waitress (Davis) and is charmed by her dreams of moving to Paris. Meanwhile, a vicious gang-leader named Duke Mantee (Bogart) is on the loose and plans to meet up with his girl at the diner.

The best parts of the film are the script and the actors. The script is a clever and relevant exploration of the era in which it was made. Each character has multiple dimensions (which is unique for the era) and the film doesn't sugar coat the endings (also rare for the time given the Hayes Code). Howard, Davis, and especially Bogart are very strong. Howard and Bogart had played their roles on stage but they seem as real and as fresh as in any other role they ever played. A strong film, a highly entertaining film, and further proof that movies from the 1930's had more to offer than poor musicals and schlocky melodramas.

Grade: A-



3 Days of the Condor:

This was also recommended to me by my Uncle Craig. ...The Petrified Forest is better. Much better. I thought this film was boring and useless. Robert Redford plays a nerdy CIA employee (codenamed Condor) who returns from lunch to find all his office co-workers have been assassinated. He kidnaps Faye Dunaway so he can hide somewhere no one knows. He finds out that there is no one he can trust, even his superiors in the CIA, as he tries to come in from the cold.

This is one of many conspiracy films of the 70's, all probably inspired by America's lost of faith in the government, that feel rather soulless. Network, The China Syndrome, Marathon Man, The Parallax View, Klute, and even Chinatown...they're all incredibly cold films. Only All the President's Men and The Conversation hold up in my opinion. 3 Days of the Condor is strangely unattractive given its cast and pedigree (Sydney Pollack directed the film) and just never pulled me in.

Grade: C


Harvard Beats Yale 29-29:

This was recommended to me by my Aunt Tiggy. I was kind of worried about this one. To use an old line...I knew how it ended. I'd read plenty of articles and blurbs about this game and was familiar with the overall story of the game. On November 23, 1968, Yale and Harvard's undefeated football teams met in Cambridge, with Yale heavily favored. The film combines interviews with 30 men of the men who played that day with game footage of all the key plays.

This could have been a really boring film...but a few of the men interviewed (including Tommy Lee Jones who was a running back on the Harvard squad) are so bizarre that it makes it a fairly entertaining movie. The movie never acts like the game meant more than it did (which is not to say it meant nothing) and is willing to broaden the spectrum of the film enough to fill its running time.

Look, if you don't care about Harvard, or Yale, or Boston, or college Football, or any of the select categories you could fit this film into...than this isn't a movie for you. But if you have any vesting interest in these things than I suggest you seek this little unambitious documentary out.

Grade: B



The Last Picture Show:

This one was recommended to me by my dad. Blegh...this one didn't work for me at all. The Last Picture Show follows three teenagers ((Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, and Cybill Shepherd) coming of age in a small town in Texas. It is one of the early classics of the New Hollywood generation (which started with Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate and ended with Raging Bull). Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, The Last Picture Show was nominated for 8 Oscars and won 2 in the supporting actor catagories (for Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman).

This movie just never clicked with me. It's not that its pretentious in any way (which was my original fear)...or that I wasn't interested in the characters (though the main character played by Timothy Bottoms is the worst character in the film)...it just never seemed to get anywhere. It's not that I can't appreciate a film whose ambition is to capture a time (the 1950's) and place (nowhere Texas) in which not much happened...but I guess I never found an "in" to the picture. Bogdanovich was ahead of his time in combining American archetypes with French New Wave styling...and full kudos to him. But, as someone who has seen Jules and Jim, and Band of Outsiders, and Breathless...I just wasn't that impressed. The film is overly long, ultimately empty, and one of the more boring film watching experiences I've had in a long time.

Grade: C-


That's all for now. I'll update you with the last few films I've watched for my Sunday night movie thing soon...