Dakota (1945)

John Devlin marries Sandy Poli without the consent of her railroad tycoon father. They elope to Dakota, which in the year of 1871 when this story is set was still federal territory. Sandy has sold one of her father's paintings for $20,000 and convinces her husband to go to Fargo and buy some land, which is bound to value greatly as she knows her father plans to pass a railroad through that town. They meet an obstacle in the person of Jim Bender, who has some crooked schemes of his own. Bender makes the wheat farmers sign a contract with him that will give him all their land in the event of an unsuccessfull harvest.

Western which alternates between the dramatic and the comical. One of the staples of the comicity is the character 'Sandy', who employs deceitful ways to get her way despite her husband's opposition, and whose indiscreet tongue repeatedly puts them in danger. Another is 'Captain Bounce', the owner and conductor of an old riverboat, with which he talks as to a woman. His assistant Nicodemus is always sleeping, adding to his constant aggravation. Nicodemus is responsible for the funniest exchange in the movie:

*quote*
Captain: What's going on over there?
Nicodemus: Why, why you has to ask me that, Captain? Man goes someplace, is a visit. Bunch of men go someplace, is a party. Everybody goes someplace, is a meeting. Whatever is going on over there got to be a meeting, Captain... because that's where they're all at.
*unquote*

Overall, not an especially interesting or funny movie, though.

Rating: 41

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2003)

A petty drug dealer is raped and kills himself. His brother, a former gangster who left his hometown to live as a lumberjack, returns and vows to avenge him.

A bad film which would certainly have provided me with abundant hilarity had I not been perfectly deluded throughout its duration that it was a perfectly serious drama. Never mind, who knows in the next incarnation I will watch it in the proper mood.

Rating: 23

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

Second viewing; first viewing with original audio; previously viewed between 1983 and 1986.

Based on the plays The Greeks Had a Word for It, by Zoë Akins, first staged in 1930, and Loco, by Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert, first staged in 1946, and in turn based on their short story published in Cosmopolitan in 1945.

*mild spoilers below*
Three working-class women rent a high-class apartment as part of a strategy aimed at catching rich husbands. One of them is a divorcee whom experience has hardened; she is courted by a handsome millionaire whom she repeatedly shuns because she thinks he is poor; she has her eyes instead on an older man, also very rich; the second girl is perhaps even greedier than the first but considerably less intelligent, besides being extremely shortsighted; she meets a man who acts like a millionaire but is diagnosed as a phony by girl number one; the third girl has a sentimental side which she still cannot curb satisfactorily; she has a date with a married man with whom, through a misunderstanding, she goes to spend a weekend on a secluded mountain cottage; a handsome forest ranger has his eyes on her. Concurrently to all that, their rented apartment's owner wants to sneak in and retrieve some documents from the vault for the Internal Revenue Service.

Agreeable comedy. The task of joining two different plays into a single movie may prove a little awkward, but in this case it was done in a passably seamless way. On the other hand, there is a slight feel of anachronism from having a 1930 play adapted for the 1950s. The world had changed since that earlier date; the style of plays also. Women who took part in a World War, either in the factories or abroad taking care of the wounded, were certainly less receptive of the kind of attitude displayed in the movie. Much of the wit here is definitely dated; there is a scene which is particularly flawed, in which the divorcee character remarks "Two more pounds and she could be arrested for bigamy". The intended meaning is not hard to fathom from the words alone. As it appears in the movie, however, it does not work and may puzzle some modern viewers. Perhaps the scene was poorly conceived for clarity; the main problem, though, for audiences used to the likes of Schwarzenegger and Stallone is that the physique of the male actor who plays the character to whom the witticism is referred will not stand out as oversized.

Rating: 61 (unchanged)

Zulu (1964)

First viewing with the original audio; previously viewed dubbed in Portuguese on May 26, 1996.

South Africa, 1879. The Zulu attack a small detachment around a British field hospital. There are 150 soldiers to defend the hospital site from 4000 Zulus. The detachment leader decides to resist at any cost.

This is an exceptionally well made film which, nevertheless, makes painfully clear the impossibility of mixing History and drama without telling lies. The worst lie in this film is to depict as pacifists respectively the missionary and the surgeon. This creates drama, without which the film would be considered rather monotonous. But real life closed environments produce populations with uniform worldviews. It is rather absurd to assume that pacifists could thrive in a war environment. They wouldn't want to be there in the first place. And you can check Wikipedia and confirm that indeed they lied about this. Another pathetic lie is the Zulu salute at the end. War is not about bravery and noble feelings. It's just another human affair which has its own rules and which throughout the centuries has molded the human brain and given it the capacity of hatred and violence. But, again, that would not make for emotional drama, so... This criticism should not imply that this film does not have many qualities and is all fantasy. The military aspect is, to all appearances, very realistic. And it makes for an entertaining spectacle.

Rating: 57 (up from 50)

Family Plot (1976)

Second viewing; first viewed between 1983 and 1986.

Phony psychic Blanche, assisted by her cab driver boyfriend George, is engaged in milking gullible women for their money. Blanche expects to collect a fee for finding a rich woman's nephew who was given for adoption as an infant. But it so happens that said nephew is a jeweller who, with the assistance of his wife Fran, kidnaps important persons and collects the ransoms in diamonds.

Suspense thriller with a comedic tone. It is a very organized movie, with a cleverly thought-out script, precisely rendered into images, but with few particularly memorable sequences (the out-of-control car, perhaps?). The acting is more or less uniformly good. False assumptions and beliefs based on false appearances are underlying motifs of the narrative.

Rating: 58 (up from 41)

Guys and Dolls (1955)

Second viewing; previously viewed between 1983 and 1986.

Based on Damon Runyon's short stories The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, Blood Pressure, Pick the Winner, and perhaps others, first published in 1932.

When one watches too many films from a certain era, he is bound to start noticing how some plotlines get repeated over and over, to the point that one asks oneself: is it lack of inspiration or sheer obsession? The premise of betting in association with seduction is one of those; recently I reviewed a movie with a similar plotline, and provided a list of forerunner works.

My review of G.I. Blues

Guys and Dolls is a pleasant enough spectacle. It does get a bit on the tiresome side, eventually. The depiction of the underworld is funny, and completely devoid of violence. It is hard to believe any outlaw environment would work like that, but I don't know, after all those were other times. The songs are adequate, but, in my opinion, seldom more than that. I am not a great fan of the Broadway musical concept, anyway.

Rating: 60 (down from 69)

Let's Dance (1950)

Donald and Kitty are a dancing duo working in wartime entertainment for soldiers. Donald wants to marry Kitty, but she marries a rich guy instead. She becomes a widow with a son. She does not get along with her late husband's mother. There is a conflict over the child's custody.

Tedious, poorly written musical. The only slightly original touch is a protagonist who does not really like to dance; he prefers the stock market. He is completely incompetent as an investor, though; he later advises a rich woman, who is equally clueless, financially speaking. And since we are speaking of class, the underlying assumption of the plot is: rich people bad, poor people good. But they are careful enought to frame it as a merely individual thing. They want to captivate the audience, who is predominantly poor; they definitely do not want to start a revolution. You see, the people who made the film are not exactly poor. Of course, sometimes an extremely shrewd viewer will connect the dots and ask: if every movie has rich people as bad, am I to conclude that all rich people are bad? Those viewers are in the minority and, yes, will have to be dealt with. Off screen! The songs and dances are nothing special.

Rating: 31

Class (1983)

The film is about an upper middle-class student named Jonathan and his adventures in prep school, from his very first day there. He shares a room with a student from a very traditional and wealthy family. The center of the drama is Jonathan's relationship with an older woman whom he meets during one of his escapades into town. This adventure turns out to be dramatic indeed, for reasons which will become clear if you watch the movie or read spoiler-infested sites like Wikipedia.

Mostly a teenage school movie with the usual pranks and sexual jokes, but there is an underlying theme which is implied by the double-meaning title. The question is whether one's position in society is on a par with one's real inner qualities. The film examines the issue by showing a clearly dysfunctional family. The father is a laissez-faire enthusiast except when it comes to tariffs ("How you gonna compete with the foreigners?") -- that is exactly Trump's doctrine, incidentally. The mother is unfaithful and an alcoholic -- the film implies that it is not her fault (but further scenes excusing her behavior were cut). The film is a little vague about main character Jonathan. I guess he is upper middle class because I gather it takes money to buy an SAT's results, but the fact that he is very impressed with his roommate's estate seems to be evidence that he is not all that rich. Oh well, perhaps this film was not that well thought out. As I said, just another teenage movie, and not one of the better ones.

Rating: 35

Hello Down There (1969)

This film's IMDB  page provides an adequate summary for it: "A marine scientist volunteers to have his family live in a prototype underwater home to prove it's practical."

The satirical elements (rock music, computers, corporate greed) arguably make for the best parts of the movie. There are some well-made underwater adventure sequences which are mildly entertaining. The inside of the underwater house has some nice visuals. All in all, nothing special, but nothing terrible either.

Rating: 42

Traktoristy (1939)

English title: Tractor Drivers

Klim is a demobilized soldier who decides to stay at a collective farm, working as a tractor mechanic. He falls in love with a fellow worker, but she has an agreement with another man to pretend they are engaged, and he mistakes it for a real engagement. He is made the leader of an all-male tractor driver unit, which engage in a productivity contest with the all-female unit. With the war looming on the horizon, they all must prepare to move from tractors to tanks.

Artistically and intellectually poor propaganda film, which was part of the pre-war effort in the USSR. André Gide said that "it is with good intentions that one makes bad literature", and it would probably apply just as well to other arts, except that saying that Stalin was full of good intentions is controversial.

Rating: 17

The Dark Knight (2008)

A bank robbery is committed by a gang led by a man known as The Joker. An examination of a few remaining money bills reveals to the police that it was a Mob bank. The police now have the names of all banks used by the Mob, and raid them. A Chinese businessman named Lau, acting as a Mob accountant, has, however, moved all the money to a secure place. A vigilante variously known as Batman or The Batman, who acts in tacit agreement with the police, travels to Hong Kong to seize Mr. Lau and deliver him to the American authorities. A new District Attorney named Dent works on Lau to persuade him to inform on his Mob associates. Dent is a rising star and is on the verge of cleaning the City from the Mob. After a few more plot turns, The Joker is hired by the Mob to kill The Batman.

This film is ranked fourth in IMDB's best movies of all time according to user votes. I confess to not having enjoyed it all that much. I suspect that the filmmaker or filmmakers' design was to produce a filmic equivalent to its protagonist's subjective experience from inside his armor. That would explain why the plot feels so overcrowded, and so does every frame, and why the narrative seems to move in such a jerky and heavy-handed manner. As numerous viewers have noticed, the plot is full of holes, and yet there is a semblance of deadly seriousness and an almost maniacal attention to detail. The topic of vigilantism versus the rule of law is discussed in superficial terms. The film has psychological and thematical aspects akin to those found in the popular Saw franchise, initiated in 2004. Those aspects are mostly related to moral quandaries which are artificially imposed on the characters, and which occasionally reproduce game-theoretical scenarios. The ending is an inversion of the premise for the short story Theme of the Traitor and the Hero, by Jorge Luis Borges, which was first published in 1944 and inspired the film The Spider's Stratagem. This literary parallel has not escaped a few attentive viewers before me, as in the following internet text:

Traitor and Hero, Borges and Nolan

Rating: 45

A Carrocinha (1955)

At a small town, the mayor hires a dog catcher and instructs him to collect and impound every dog in town, regardless of them having an owner. That mayor is a henpecked husband who is forced by his wife to share the conjugal bed with the family dog. At first the dog catcher does not carry out his assignment successfully, because the dog owners protest. He gets other transport assignments for a while. One day he meets the daughter of a small farmer and, after a short courting time, proposes marriage to her. But marriage requires money, which he does not have; that forces him to agree to an even gruesomer task than his initial one. Will he go through with it?

This is structured as an allegory, but ends in a conventionally comic fashion. There is an identification between the man in charge of the atrocities and his would-be victims; in other words, he has a canine personality. The motivation for the mayor's anti-dog crusade is left vague: it is supposed to be a ruse intended as a justification for the capture of his wife's dog; but perhaps it is also an outlet for his universal hatred of dogs. In one of the musical numbers, starring the leading actor as singer, there is a curious scene which would probably raise a riot if made today: two black women stand cheek-to-cheek with him while he is not paying attention to them. He initially displays pleasure with their contact, but after he looks at them he displays repulse, then  pushes them away and pulls two other women, both white, towards him.

Rating: 35

V shest chasov vechera posle voyny (1944)

English titles: Six P.M.; Six O'Clock in the Evening After the War

Two soldiers are serving in the same artillery unit. They are best friends and share everything. One day they receive a morale-boosting card from some Kindergarten children with their teacher, inviting them to visit when they can. They find the schoolteacher very attractive in the photo. They all soon meet, and one of the guys begins a war romance with the schoolteacher. The couple set up a rendezvouz in Moscow, as per the movie's title. Through all of the war's twists of fate, will they be able to keep it?

Slightly off-putting in its unwavering intensity, yet fascinating as a historical document, this is a musical drama having World War II as backdrop, and obviously intended for consumption by the very men and women who were fighting it. You will not find in it much to stimulate your intellect, but I defy you not to be moved by its ending.

Rating: 31

Vesna (1947)

English title: Spring

A film studio intends to do a film based on the life and works of a scientist who is developing a solar energy system. They put an ad out in search of lookalikes for that scientist. A dancer-actress performing in stage musicals applies for the job. When her boss refuses to release her from her contract, she looks up the scientist and asks her to fill in for her when the film rehearsal schedule conflicts with her theatrical appointments.

As the person nicknamed Shezan points out in a review on this movie's IMDB page:

*quote*
"Vesna" (Spring) is a cross between "Ninotchka" (mannish Soviet career woman discovers silliness and sophistication) and "The Prince and the Pauper" - Shatrova, the singer-actress, exchanges roles with Nikitina, the renowned scientist whom she's supposed to portray in a lightweight movie, and each woman (both played by Lyubov Orlova, a real Soviet film star who's not especially glamorous but plenty talented) finds love in the other's universe.
*unquote*

Ninotchka was a critique of Communism. Since this is a film made in a communist country, it was expected that they would somehow deflect all critical discourse away from Communism. And that is exactly what happens. In Vesna, they replace Communism with Science, and Capitalism with Art. In a way, it is a response to Ninotchka, and an attempt of rebuttal of it. They try to show that love of life and a love life are not dependent on particular political systems, yet it may be influenced by personal temperament and the professional environment. It is worth pointing out that both films have female protagonists; it is as if they were saying that women cannot get too serious without losing some of their humanity (but men are somehow immune to that). All this may sound very interesting, but the truth is that this is not an especially well-written movie. It starts out well enough, but soon gets repetitive and strangely uneventful at some parts. The musical numbers are lavishly executed, but the odd thing is that they don't relate in any way to the story and add nothing to it.

Rating: 34

Vozvrashchenie Vasiliya Bortnikova (1953)

English titles: Vasili's Return; The Return of Vasili Bortnikov

A man returns home from the war to find his wife married to another man. The new husband steps aside and the old one resumes his life beside her and their two kids. He cannot shake his jealous feelings, though. He is made president of a kolkhoz -- a collective farm -- which is facing problems of productivity deriving mainly from the malfunctioning of tractors. An engineer is summoned to find the root of the problem.

This is an example of Soviet Socialist Realism. There is a didactic function which the movie sets itself to meet. One of the angles is the reconstruction of a fractured home. Another one deals with the inner workings of a collective farm. Several portions of the film are quite technical and may put some viewers to sleep. There are different moral lessons for the respective conjugal and farming subplots. In the former case, one recommends frankness and equilibrium in overcoming emotional problems; in the latter one, one is taught that seemingly minuscule errors may cause huge problems.

Rating: 41

Maraviglioso Boccaccio (2015)

English title: Wondrous Boccaccio

Based on stories from the Decameron, by Giovanni Boccacio, first published around 1350.

In 1348, Florence is hit hard with the plague. A few youngsters (3 men and 7 women) decide to take refuge at a nearby country estate. During their stay there they pass the time by telling stories to one another. The action shifts between them and the stories they tell, which are the following: (1) a young married woman has the plague. Her family have her transported to a retired place, and while on the road her condition worsens. A man who is in love with her is following her carriage. (2) At an art studio, two painters decide to play a prank on a third one. They pretend they know of a certain stone which makes people invisible. (3) A young widow goes back to live with her doting father. The latter has a young metalsmith friend who lives near him. (4) At a nun's convent, a young nun is caught with a man in her bed. The other nuns summon the mother superior. (5) A young man has an unrequited  love for a married woman. He comes to lose all his possessions, except one house and his pet falcon. The woman's husband dies; she goes to spend one summer near where the young man lives. Her only son befriends the young man and becomes attached to his falcon. The child becomes very ill.

Agreeable adaptation, with lovely cinematography and overall competent mise-en-scène. It is hard to say what went into the filmmakers' minds when they selected those particular 5 stories, but there is a subtle unifying theme to them, namely how appearances cast a veil on reality and induce one into error. This theme is evident enough in all the stories except perhaps number (3), but I think one may find it there also, in the disclosing of a dark side to a father's apparently benign feelings.

Rating: 60

Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

Based on the Tevye stories by Sholem Aleichem, first published in 1894.

The story is set in the last years of the nineteenth century. A milkman living in a small Ukrainian village dreams of getting rich and marrying his daughters into money, but they choose husbands who fail to fulfill his dream. The first one ditches the widower butcher for a young tailor; the second one decides to marry a revolutionary; the third one disappoints him greatly by marrying outside of their faith.

At first I thought I would say this is a greatly overrated movie, but I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing. The simple fact is that works of art exist for all kinds of people. When someone says a movie is overrated, all he is saying is that, horror of horrors, not all people are like him, or, even worse, most people are not like him. On the other hand, it all depends on whom you take as representatives of an authoritative opinion. If I chose 100 persons at random from my geographical vicinity, I bet most would find Fiddler on the Roof just as boring as I did. No, on second though, it is likely they would find it even more boring. But one does not get to be a successful movie critic by having common tastes. Not, anyway, by avowing them. On the other hand, a lot of common middle-class people enjoy going to Broadway musicals, and most of them say they like them. I often wonder if they are being sincere. Well, enough of that. I want you all to enjoy the considerations of someone who thoroughly disliked this movie, and then decide if somehow there was a failure of communication, or perhaps a failure of a different sort, somewhere:

From the User Comments section of the Fiddler on the Roof IMDB page:

*quote*

Horrible

abrafocus13 March 2006

Warning: Spoilers

Sadly, this is my dad's favorite movie. The songs are more than annoying. I can't stand them! Now we have the soundtrack, and I have to put up with that so-called "music." If you want a rally good musical, watch "The Sound of Music." (1965)

**Possible spoilers ahead**

"Fiddler on the Roof" is about a Jewish family who is being forced out of their homes via Hitler. I am not Jewish, but that's not why I don't like this movie. I just don't think the singing and dancing are that entertaining. The story is a bit weak, too. One of Tevye's daughters is converted to Christianity, and he denounces her for it. Being a Christian myself, I object to that.

If you must see this movie, skip the "Miracle of Miracles" song. It's more than unbearable. This movie is among my bottom ten movies.

My Score: 0.5/10.

*unquote*

IMDB user bkoganbing has a much warmer review of the movie, in which he remarks the similarities between the plot's setup and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Now I must rush off to see another movie. Too bad they haven't filmed Charles Darwin: Live and in Concert. Sounds like a riot.

Rating: 40

The Black Hole (1979)

A spaceship in search of extraterrestrial life is in the proximity of a black hole, and spots a larger spaceship from an earlier expedition which never returned to Earth. The crew from the smaller ship decide to approach the spotted one. They are introduced to the interior of the larger ship, and meet its captain, who is conducting an experiment which will take him inside the black hole and "beyond".

Baird Searles, in his book Films of Science Fiction and Fantasy, dubbed it 2001 Leagues Under the Sea, a nickname which perfectly defines this film. There is not much I can add to the prevailing criticism regarding it; I only disagree with people who complain about its scientific inaccuracies. Movies aim to be waking dreams, not faithful simulations of physical reality. This film has many screenplay problems, and the midsection is terribly boring -- robots playing video games come to mind as the nadir of the movie. It could be remade into a masterpiece by intelligent people. The idea of escaping this world into a another one is perhaps a reflection of the time it was made. The end of the 1970s were a transition period of sorts. That is true also for the studio who produced this film, which would enter a bleak decade in the 1980s, and emerge in the late 1980s as a real corporate force, albeit producing practically only crap.

Rating: 31

Herbie Goes Bananas (1980)

A young man travels to Mexico with a friend to collect a car he has inherited. He intends to enter it in a car race in Brazil. In Mexico he has his wallet picked by a kid. He then gets mixed-up with a trio of bad guys, one of whom also has his wallet picked by the same kid. Those bad guys are planning to steal some relics from an ancient archeological site, and their picked wallet contains a microfilm which (as I gathered) has a map to that site. The bad guys chase the kid throughout Central and South America. The young man and his friend, plus some assorted characters from the South America-bound ship all get mixed up in that chase. Oh, and before I forget: the car, who has a personality and self-command powers, also follows them.

This is possibly the weakest of the Herbie films, excepting the 2005 movie which I haven't seen. It is not a complete loss, however: at times the film takes the franchise's premise to the surreal realm, e.g., in the bullfighting sequence. The film also has some nice landscapes of Mexico.

Rating: 30