Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.
Opening Chatter (no spoilers): Again I’ve (proudly) ignored the weekly-box office-champs in favor of something considerably more-esoteric, this time around avoiding the animated-feature The Bad Guys (Pierre Pemberton)—seems to be a successful-family-option, but as my cat just had her annual shots she wasn’t feeling like going out last weekend—at #1 with $24 million domestically (U.S.-Canada), $87.5 million worldwide, plus ultra-violence in The Northman (Robert Eggers) at #4, taking in $12.3 million/$23.9 million (I’d already passed over—during Passover [and Easter and Ramadan]—#2 Sonic the Hedgehog 2 [Jeff Fowler; $146.3 million/$288.3 million] and #3 Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore [David Yates; $67.1 million/$280 million] in previous weeks), but this newest weird choice, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, did come in at #5 (although you’d hardly know how it could sell that many tickets when my Friday 5 PM screening in San Francisco Bay Area suburb San Leandro had a few less than 20 patrons, so I guess Nicholas Cage isn’t among the Dynamic Dozen of movie stars in these parts). Admittedly, in collection with his screen successes (including Oscar’s Best Actor for Leaving Las Vegas [Mike Figgis, 1995] along with another nomination in that category for Adaptation [Spike Jonze, 2002]) he’s been in a lot of duds, which is the opening premise of this meta-comedy as Cage is playing a version of himself, so desperate for a juicy role that when he doesn’t get one he accepts a $1 million offer to attend a birthday party for a huge fan, Javi Gutierrez, in Mallorca, Spain where, even as he’s determined to retire from acting, his host has written a screenplay he’s very eager for Cage to star in.
To complicate things, Cage is also recruited by a couple of CIA agents to help him find a kidnapped girl, whom they’re convinced is somewhere in Javi’s island compound as the guy is known as an international arms dealer when in reality it’s his cousin, Lucas, who’s the true criminal in the family. While there are plot structures that seem to throw this story into the realm of an action-adventure it’s truly just an intended farce about such movies (with their often-absurd-elements) as well as Cage’s career, filled with quick references to some of his many big-screen-presences over the years (there’s even the imagined persona of his younger self, Nicky, to keep goading him on to continue with the acting). With the understanding this wackiness is played for as many laughs as possible (even as action scenes drag on), it’s an enjoyable alternative to more-serious-fare (The Northman) if you’re willing to venture out to a theater now that another damn COVID-variation is once again on the rise.
I didn’t find anything else to bring me into the public arena on Saturday nor was I aware of anything new on streaming that stirred my interest so instead I turned to a true classic on my local PBS TV station, Cabaret, which boasts the Oscar-winning-talents of Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey, and director Bob Fosse; normally, I wait for these older triumphs to be given some sort of re-release before I review them, as I've done a few times over this blog's life (or I’d be filling up these posts with long-after-the-fact-comments on various 5 stars-triumphs for the past 100+ years), but I’ll make an exception in this case because it still holds up so well despite debuting 50 years ago with streaming now easily available. Also in the Short Takes section I’ll offer suggestions for some choices on the Turner Classic Movies channel (but too much extra text for line-justified-layout like you see here [Related Links stuff at each posting’s end is similarly-ragged], at least to be done by this burned-out-BlogSpot-drone—oh, ye tedious software!) along with my standard dose of industry-related-trivia.
Here’s the trailer for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate
that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: Long-time-Hollywood-star Nicholas Cage (played by … Nicholas Cage) is fearful his career’s coming to an end as he keeps getting sidetracked by worthless roles in equally-worthless-movies. He’s so desperate to get what he sees as a useful-revival-part he breaks into a brief, unnecessary audition for director David Gordon Green (actually lines from Green’s film with Cage, Joe [2013]), which is impressive but Green decides to go a different direction with the casting, only adding to Cage’s woes as he gets criticism from ex-wife Olivia Henson (Sharon Horgan) for not being available enough to their teenage daughter Addy Cage (Lily Sheen) who has her own complaints about Dad forcing her to watch a film she hated, the silent German Expressionism masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920); he attempts to make up for it by coming to her 16th birthday party but, drunk from the frustration of losing his desired-movie-part, he tries to sing a song about her, becoming an embarrassment for everyone. To finalize his misery he’s been living in an L.A. hotel for the last year, owes them $600,000, so he finds himself locked out of his room. In desperation as he decides to give up acting he takes up agent Richard Fink’s (Neil Patrick Harris) offer from a devoted fan, billionaire Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal, as wildly-successful as Cage in exaggerated-comic-mode here), to attend Javi’s birthday party at his island resort near Mallorca, Spain (in the Mediterranean Sea, although most of the film’s shot in Croatia) for $1 million.
Upon arriving, though, Nicholas (who’s occasionally being harassed by an imagined version of his younger self, Nicky [also played by Cage yet listed in the credits as Nicholas Kim Coppola, his real name; yes, that Coppola family with his father being August Coppola, former Dean of Creative Arts at San Francisco State U., while his uncle’s director Francis Ford Coppola of Godfather fame, his aunt’s actor Talia Shire of Godfather and Rocky fame, and his cousin’s director {not actor!} Sofia Coppola, etc. with lots of Oscar gold among them] who’s determined Nicholas is an amazing actor who needs to continue his career) finds himself with 2 unexpected challenges: (1) The reason Javi wants Nicholas to be there is to get him to take the starring role in a script Javi’s written, so he’s also shocked to find out his cinema-hero wants out of the business; (2) Nicholas is recruited by married CIA agents, Vivian (Tiffany Haddish) and Martin Etten (Ike Barinholtz)—same surname as co-screenwriter (with Gormican) Kevin Etten, another in-joke—to spy on Javi because they know him as an international arms dealer who seems to have kidnapped Maria (Katrin Vankova), teenage daughter of a man running for President in some fictional country, a guy determined to clean up corruption who’s now pressured to drop out of his race in order to get the safe return of his daughter.
After initial rejection of both pressures on his further activities, Cage decides he'll help the CIA in respect for how he’d feel if Abby were threatened so he stays on the island to work with Javi on the script while secretly trying to figure out where Maria's stashed; after a brief time spent with Javi, though, he begins to seriously like the guy (even after a misadventure of jumping off a cliff, noted in this review’s next section), is impressed to find his host has constructed a memorabilia room of Cage’s career (complete with identical [working] golden guns from Face/Off [John Woo, 1997]), but, when pushed too hard by his CIA handlers to change the script to help locate Maria (after a goofy LSD episode), Cage finds himself the object of concern by Javi who flies Olivia and Abby to the island for a tension-clearing which doesn’t work out well. Meanwhile, we find the real criminal in Javi’s family is his cousin, Lucas Gutierrez (Paco León)—he’s the one who kidnapped Maria—with Javi having agreed to act as the family's public face in return for this lavish lifestyle he’s been given.
⇒Lucas tells Javi about Cage’s CIA connection, orders him to kill Cage or Lucas will kill Javi. Cage (secretly armed with those golden guns) has a face-off with Javi but neither can kill the other, then they have to outrun Lucas’ thugs back to the villa only to find Abby’s been kidnapped too. In a wild climax, intended to further parody the events of action-adventure movies, Cage along with Olivia, Javi, and (his long-desired-assistant) Gabriela, manage to find where the girls are being kept. After a wild chase—with Javi and Gabriela, now connected as a couple, staying behind to provide some danger to a few of Lucas’ henchmen—Nicholas, Olivia, Abby, and Maria make it to the U.S. Embassy but Lucas is still about to shoot Cage when Abby tosses him a knife with which he kills Lucas. As it all wraps up we find the events of this movie have been made into another movie credited to Javi—with Demi Moore and Anna MacDonald as Olivia and Abby, Cage again playing himself—which is a big success, but instead of joining Javi at the after-premiere-party, Nicholas instead chooses a quiet evening with Olivia and Abby, where at Abby’s request they watch Paddington 2 (Paul King, 2017)—which Nicholas had already watched with Javi, being overcome emotionally by it, just as his host had been previously⇐ (Cage’s character had actively avoided Paddington 2 up to that point, as have I; whether I reconsider or not may take further contemplation).
So What? If you can’t already tell from this film’s ridiculous title, the whole thing’s a farce about action movies in general, Cage’s career in particular, with him eagerly joining in on the joke. Unfortunately for me, although I’ve seen a good number of his roles (see this list for a full accounting, then you can go to this article for a useful overview of his lengthy on-screen-presence) the many references to that past work woven into this fictional take on his relatively-consistent-acting persona didn’t fully register with me because I don’t have a quick recall of all those earlier roles. One example is when Cage and Javi are near a cliff over the Mediterranean with Javi trying to challenge Cage's announcement of quitting acting by suddenly spouting lines from his own screenplay (3:06) in an attempt to get Cage to join in, which ultimately he does in frustration of trying to shut Javi up so he comes out with a bit from Con Air (Simon West, 1997), which would have been even funnier for me had I realized the context of what he was saying. I now know there were many other such inclusions, but I think you’d have to be as avid a Cage fan as Javi to catch/ appreciate all of them—or, at least, have access to extensive press materials (usually I don’t) which would enumerate/detail such inclusions, allowing critics with access to this background info (not me) to appear more-cinematically-aware than they may actually be (the Two Guys blog may not be acceptable for Rotten Tomatoes [I’ve tried!], but I do know how many hustles work in this business).
What did seem relatable to me, though, was Cage also playing Nicky, the younger version of himself (decent-enough makeup/wig so he looks somewhat-plausibly-younger than present-day Nicholas), which reminded me of his marvelous turn playing twin brothers, Charlie and Donald Kaufman, in the brilliant Adaptation where, in that film, actual screenwriter C. Kaufman (as played by Cage) writes himself into his script (along with his [fictional] brother Donald) in the difficult process of trying to adapt Susan Orlean‘s non-fiction-book, The Orchid Thief (1998), into a movie where Orlean also becomes a character with events veering wildly beyond her original account of searching in the Florida swamps for the exotic ghost orchid with crafty (semi-criminal) John Laroche (Chris Cooper).
Admittedly, in that scenario Cage was playing another actual person, not himself, with Meryl Streep cast as Susan Orlean, delving into events that had no part in The Orchid Thief, as, seemingly, what Charlie’s trying to write (and the complicated events around that task) in what we observed becomes the script for what we have seen on screen in Adaptation, so it’s not exactly the same type of fictionalizing-reality we'll overtly see in … Talent but it does have resonances that weren’t as obviously explored in The Unbearable … even as many others (Spoilers of course) found a way into this delightful, but a bit overblown, farce, so, while I think anyone could find humor in this movie even if you’re not all that familiar with Cage’s previous work or the kinds of scenes you’d expect to find in action-adventure cinema, I’m sure it will delight you even better if you can call up at least a good many of the included references because the intentional jokes will be considerably funnier than for the more naïve in the audience (somewhat including me) who don’t fully realize what they’re seeing. Does that justify spending money in a theater for it? I think so, because one of my viewing companions who admitted afterward he’s probably never seen a Nicholas Cage movie previously thoroughly enjoyed ... Talent once he could clearly accept it for all the intended silliness it presents.
Bottom Line Final Comments: If I’ve not been convincing enough to lure you into considering going out in public while weighing out if the newest COVID variant’s starting to make your life difficult again (and you should pay attention to what’s best for your situation because age [74 for me, 71 for my wife, Nina]/underlying conditions [Nina gets a double-whammy in this case] are nothing to ignore, especially when vaccinated/boosted people like U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris find themselves testing positive [although she hasn’t shown any symptoms yet, but even those who don’t can find themselves cursed with “long COVID” problems later, so do continue to mask up, be smart about where you go/what you do as this latest surge continues to haunt us]), then—if you feel healthy and safe enough to do so (maybe come to San Leandro or Hayward if you like; so far, I haven’t been finding much competition at the screenings I’ve attended, even with a $6 matinee price, so you’d likely be safe in these large theaters, yet it’s quite clear the movies I’ve been advocating are the ones making considerably less money than what’s currently #1-#4 at the domestic box-office so my “indulge in an empty theater”-strategy may have little impact if you want to seek out the top-grossers)—you might be interested in taking further encouragement from the CCAL where the Rotten Tomatoes critics give … Talent 88% positive reviews, although, if you’re still hesitant, you can take rationale from the ones at Metacritic where they came up with just a 67% average score (more details on these critics’-accumulation-sites on this film/anything I review in each posting’s Related Links section, found farther below after you’ve done great considerable scrolling careful reading).*
*But, as Oscar/Emmy/Tony winner Viola Davis said in response to negative comments about her role as Michelle Obama in the new Showtime TV series The First Lady, “Critics absolutely serve no purpose,” so maybe you don’t need our opinions (despite my admiration for Davis’ extensive work).
I certainly don’t think you need to educate yourself on Nicholas Cage movies before seeing The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent to be able to actively enjoy it, although you might want to see what Cage himself says (6:42) about some of those roles; what might catch you off-guard, though, is why Cage doesn't want to see the final version of ... Talent (1:33), but that’s his personal choice which I hope won’t dissuade you from considering it at some point, even if it’s at a later time when available on streaming. If I were constructing a mini-Nicholas Cage festival from his extensive body of work I might be interested enough to consider his “Nicky” debut in such stuff as Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling, 1982) or Valley Girl (Martha Coolidge, 1983), but a clear start for me would be Raising Arizona (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1987), then I’d move on to Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990), although Nina would tell you not to miss Moonstruck (Norman Jewison, 1987). Either way, after that for me would be Leaving Las Vegas, Con Air, Face/Off, Adaptation, and Pig (Michael Sarnoski, 2021; review in our September 2, 2021 posting), although I’m sure anyone who knows others of his past work from that IMDb link noted way up above might suggest other choices.
For me, however, the only other choice I needed to make in this review was what to use for my standard wrap-up tactic of a Musical Metaphor to bring all of this to closure, an appropriate tune that kept eluding me until I realized a useful one is the cutesy inclusion of The Turtles’ “Happy Together” (on their 1967 album of the same name as the song) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m RCe5L1imxg which pops up briefly in the trailer because of its allusions to how quickly and totally Nicholas and Javi bonded in this story so what’s originally about a heterosexual romance cleverly becomes a statement of “bromance” here as these guys go through many action-adventure clichés to once again bring stability back to their lives”: “Me and you and you and me / No matter how they toss the dice, it had to be.” Plus, this song reminded me of a similar silly moment back in 1975 in Austin, TX when I went to a Beach Boys concert with the opening act of Flo and Eddie (a group I and seemingly no one else in the audience seemed to know anything about) who stunned us by coming on like Kiss in crazy costumes with heavy-metal music, then broke into some Turtles’ song (I think it was “Happy Together”), later explaining they were Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman of the now-disbanded Turtles, who then gave us a string of their hits for a marvelous concert mood that flowed seamlessly into the music of the sunny Lords of Southern CA, just as … Talent’s Nicholas Cage and his somewhat-estranged-family found themselves into a quiet good grove by the end of their journey.
SHORT TAKES (more in intention than in actuality this time)
(spoilers also appear here)
Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972) rated PG 124 min.
In 1931 a Cambridge doctoral student, Brian Roberts (Michael York), comes to Berlin for dissertation research, meets fellow roomer/Kit Kat Klub performer Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) with whom he has an affair until it becomes a clumsy-threesome with Baron Maximillian von Heune (Helmut Griem), as Nazis are on the rise, providing problems for another—Jewish—couple.
Here’s the trailer:
Before reading further, please refer to the plot spoilers warning detailed far above.
As I noted in my Opening Chatter, I’ve only reviewed in these postings older films that have been given a re-release of some sort or else I’d be packing these weekly epistles with 5 stars-praises for a huge number of screen classics that have set the standard during the last roughly 100 years of this artistic medium for what I currently (and rarely) find to be equivalent to these time-honored-triumphs. (Besides, for anything that originally came out in the 20th century you can easily find plenty that’s already been said on behalf of these tentpole-productions so there’s little need for me to pile on to what’s already available, in extensive book form or through running comments from directors/noted critics on enhanced-DVD-versions of these classics—although I do make note of such memorable successes in my TCM recommendations [just below] when they pop up on that cablecast’s schedule from week to week [you’ll find my mention of 4 such masterpieces in this week’s encouragements]). However, after watching again last Saturday on KQED TV (the San Francisco area’s primary PBS station) Bob Fosse’s cinematic-pinnacle with Cabaret (something I showed annually for a couple of decades in my Film and American Society class at Mills College [Oakland, CA] prior to retirement), I was so impressed again with its magnificence (probably my choice for Best Film Musical ever, although it does have to compete with another stage work brought to screen for that title, namely West Side Story—both the original, directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins [1961], and the current one by Steven Spielberg [2021]—while this Cabaret also begins on stage, adapted from the 1966 Broadway version of the same name [John Kander music, Fred Ebb lyrics, Joe Masteroff book] itself adapted from a 1951 play, I Am a Camera [John Van Druten], also an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin, a largely autobiographical-fiction based on the author’s sojourn to the German capital 1929-1932). I’m also familiar with the stage version of Cabaret, having seen it on Broadway in 1969 (Joel Grey was in the original cast, doubt he was still there 3 years later) and in San Francisco (c. 1988) with Grey for sure this time, still chilling as the Emcee (although, ultimately, I do prefer the Fosse film as the changes with new characters, new crises, even some new songs just take the concept even deeper into an existential-darkness in my opinion).
If, 50 years after its release, you’re still not aware of the plot of this cinematic narrative, I’ll briefly note it’s about a British Ph.D. student, Brian Roberts (Michael York), come from Cambridge to Berlin in 1931 to continue his studies where he meets, in his rooming house (he gives English lessons to pay the rent), the self-described “divinely-decadent” performer from the Kit Kat Klub, American Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), falls into an affair with her after disastrous previous attempts with “the wrong three girls,” works with Sally to encourage a courtship between 2 of his students, poor Fritz Wendel (Fritz Wepper)—a Jew claiming to be Protestant—and rich Natalia Landauer (Marisa Berenson) from a prominent Jewish family, her trying to hold off his advances due to her perceived understanding of their fundamental differences when Nazis were on the rise. Brian and Sally’s affair undergoes a challenge also when she meets Baron Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem) who makes it his task to corrupt both of them. ⇒Ultimately, Fritz admits his Jewishness to Natalia and they marry, but the situation goes sour for Sally and Brian when both of them admit having sex with Max (who leaves for Argentina); Sally then finds she’s pregnant but has an abortion, realizing a future as an academic’s wife is totally contrary to her desire to be a great film actress, so he leaves Berlin, she embraces her life on stage in denial of how Germany will soon be overcome by Hitler’s fanaticism.⇐ Certainly the Academy was impressed, doling out 8 Oscars—Best Director, Actress (Minnelli), Supporting Actor (Grey), Cinematography, Film Editing, Art Direction, Sound, Score Adaptation and Original Song Score—as well as noms for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, losing those to The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972), which also got Best Actor (Marlon Brando, as York stood no chance in that race—he wasn't even nominated); I can’t find absolute fault with any of those, although it’s hard to say Cabaret’s better than Coppola’s masterpiece (easy 5 stars if I ever review it; I did give that rating to the re-edited version of The Godfather Part III [1990], Dec. 17, 2020 posting) for Oscars in Cinematography, Film Editing, and Sound, while the Supporting Actor race for me is still a toss-up between Grey and Pacino, but overall the sweeping power of Cabaret makes it easy for me to recommend, even if I’d never rank the whole experience as superior to the impact of The Godfather.
For me, their work with Cabaret is easily a career-best for Fosse (on film at least) and Minnelli (despite her wonderful late-career role in TV’s Arrested Development [Fox 2003-’06, Netflix 2013-’19] where she dies after being encased in cement but when her body is found someone says she’s “the happiest corpse I’ve ever seen”) with the whole experience of Cabaret being a tragic exploration of Sally’s doomed-assumption she’d find a star-making-career in cinema (although I’ll agree she’d be miserable trying to maintain the role of faculty-wife with [bi-sexual at best] Brian) and the horrors to come for 3 of these main characters who stay in Berlin, with Fritz and Natalia well aware of what awaits them (unless they leave the country, which she might be rich enough for them to do if the Nazis don’t confiscate her family property), Sally seemingly oblivious (or in denial) of what tomorrow may bring. Another aspect of “tomorrow” is the song the young man in the countryside biergarten sings, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me", which gives me the chills every time I see it, especially in our world 50 years removed from this film where “populist” (often, more like Fascists) movements (or outright dictatorships as in Russia, China, many Latin American and African countries) in so many places worldwide (including the U.S., when I see the continuing knee-bending of right-wingers to the dictates of Donald Trump) continue as these freedom-abusers keep alive their dreams of “somewhere a glory awaits unseen.” We can only hope that more of this horror will remain unseen.
On a purely academic aside, I’ll note that unlike such films as West Side Story where anyone can sing and dance to move the plot along, Cabaret is what some call a (mostly) non-integrated musical, where except for the “Tomorrow” song, all of the music is done within the Kit Kat Klub in the context of professionals doing their numbers on a stage for an audience in the film (and us), so in this manner it’s still a musical but not one that requires as much “suspension of disbelief” as do the fully-integrated ones. You don’t have to suspend much of anything to fully appreciate Cabaret, though, which also resonated well with the CCAL as RT gave it 93% positive reviews, MC an 80% average score (although these were retrospective-reviews, as these sites didn’t begin until, respectively, 1998 and 1999 with the former’s results based on 45 reviews, the latter’s on only 8). Nevertheless, there are only a limited number of other 5 stars-triumphs I could recommend more highly, so if you’ve never seen Cabaret or haven’t seen it in a long time, I fully encourage watching it when you can. For a Musical Metaphor I’ll give you the film’s show-stopping-finale of Sally’s powerful rendition of "Cabaret" where she’s willing to end “going like Elsie” from “too much pills and liquor.” True, “From cradle tomb / It isn’t that long a stay,” but, at least in a lot of circumstances, the journey doesn’t have to be as hopeless as so many of these Depression-era-Berliners sadly/blindly chose for themselves.
Suggestions for TCM cablecasts
At least until the pandemic subsides Two Guys also want to encourage you to consider movies you might be interested in that don’t require subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime, similar Internet platforms (we may well be stuck inside for longer than those 30-day-free-initial-offers), or premium-tier-cable-TV-fees. While there are a good number of video networks offering movies of various sorts (mostly broken up by commercials), one dependable source of fine cinematic programming is Turner Classic Movies (available in lots of basic-cable-packages) so I’ll be offering suggestions of possible choices for you running from Thursday afternoon of the current week (I usually get this blog posted by early Thursday mornings) on through Thursday morning of the following week. All times are for U.S. Pacific zone so if you see something of interest please verify actual show time in your area for the day listed. These recommendations are my particular favorites (no matter when they’re on, although some of those early-day-ones might need to be recorded, watched later), but there’s considerably more to pick from you might like even better; feel free to explore their entire schedule here. You can also click the down arrow at the right of each listing for additional, useful info.
I’ll bet if you checked that entire schedule link just above you’d find other options of interest, but these are the only ones grabbing my attention at present. Please dig in further for other possibilities.
Friday April 29, 2022
9:45 PM Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938) Quintessential screwball comedy: Cary Grant as an easily-befuddled paleontologist on the verge of finishing a Brontosaurus skeleton and marrying a prim woman we know isn’t a right match especially after he meets a cute, flighty heiress (Katharine Hepburn) who gets him in increasingly-embarrassing situations even as romance develops between them. Only movie I can recall featuring 2 leopards. Somewhat remade as What’s Up Doc? (1972).
Sunday May 1, 2022
2:15 PM Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962) Adapted from the famous/infamous novel by Vladimir Nabokov this film walks a careful line for its still-buttoned-down-release-year concerning the sexual obsession of a middle-aged man (James Mason) for a teenager (Sue Lyon) to the point of marrying her mother (Shelly Winters) to be near the girl, while an even-more nefarious guy (Peter Sellers) lurks in the shadows, lusting as well. Sellers provides comic relief, helps Kubrick dodge censorship.
Tuesday May 3, 2022
3:00 PM Singin’ in the Rain (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1952) Beloved-musical (a standard for achievement in its genre) starring Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O’Connor, Jean Hagen, and Cyd Charisse about Hollywood’s clumsy transition into sound movies, plus romance between male star and female newcomer of great potential; features the fabulous “Broadway Melody” sequence, a grand MGM spectacular, along with many songs borrowed from a lot of previous MGM musicals.
Wednesday May 4, 2022
12:45 PM Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) Difficult to make a satire about nuclear annihilation but this one succeeds, an hilarious send-up of the Cold War escalation between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. (regarding surviving nuclear holocaust in underground bunkers for years: “Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!”) as a very deranged general orders a hit on Russia which looks to succeed. Peter Sellers is in 3 roles, others include George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and James Earl Jones. (4/28/2022 Yes, given the current tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine it may be even harder now to laugh at this grim story, but “Mr. President, we must not allow a satire gap!”)
If you’d like your own PDF of ratings/summaries of this week's reviews, suggestions for TCM cablecasts, links to Two Guys info click this link to access then save, print, or whatever you need.
Other Cinema-Related Stuff: Some extra items for you: (1) Weak box-office for The Northman shows danger of big budgets for arthouse films; (2) Theater owners say no more to the experiment of opening films in theaters and streaming simultaneously; (3) Theater owners open to running Netflix movies; (4) American Cinema Editors still angry over exclusion from live Oscars broadcast . As usual for now I’ll close out this section with Joni Mitchell’s "Big Yellow Taxi" (from her 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album)—because “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”—and a reminder that you can search streaming/rental/purchase movie options at JustWatch.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
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Here’s more information about The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent:
https://www.lionsgatepublicity.com/theatrical/the-unbearable-weight-of-massive-talent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrqLhigVPlI (9:26 interview with actors Nicholas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Lily Mo Sheen, Jacob Scipio, and Alessandra Mastronardi, co-screenwriter Kevin Etten, director/co-screenwriter Tom Gormican), but if you want more here’s another one (13:30) with the same interviewees at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3ak78j0pHM
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_unbearable_weight_of_massive_talent
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-unbearable-weight-of-massive-talent
Here’s more information about Cabaret:
https://www.filmsite.org/caba.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APBd2vtquoE (4:36 retrospective on when the film turned 40 in 2012 with actors Joel Grey, Michael York, Marisa Berenson and Nicole Fosse, daughter of the director, Bob Fosse)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cabaret
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/cabaret
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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work. (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews-academic-articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)
If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20th century, not so much the contemporary world. I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game," offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.
By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check-out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile (quite an eternal while, in fact, but maybe while there you’ll get a chance to meet Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, RIP). Ken
P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker (although, as you know, with bar songs there are plenty about people broken down by various tragic circumstances, with maybe the best of the bunch—calls itself “perfect”—being "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" written by Steve Goodman, sung by David Allen Coe). But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion/lover/
wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes/wanes over the months/years to come. But, just as we can raunchy at times (in private of course) Neil and his backing band, Promise of the Real, on that same night also did a lengthy, fantastic version of "Cowgirl in the Sand" (19:06) which I’d also like to commit to this blog’s always-ending-tunes; I never get tired of listening to it, then and now (one of my idle dreams is to play guitar even half this well). But, while I’m at it, I’ll also include another of my top favorites, from the night before at Desert Trip, the Rolling Stones’ "Gimme Shelter" (Wow!), a song “just a shot away” in my memory (along with my memory of their great drummer, Charlie Watts, RIP). To finish this cluster of all-time-great-songs I’d like to have played at my wake (as far away from now as possible) here’s one Dylan didn’t play at Desert Trip but it’s great, much beloved by me and Nina: "Visions of Johanna."
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