MoviesEtc2

June 24. WAIT UNTIL DARK by Frederick Knott. A blind woman, left alone by her husband, foils three violent criminals hell bent on stealing a doll brought from Montreal by her husband. What a lot of crap! I think the author made it up! He also wrote Dial M for Murder.
July 7. BLACK COMEDY by Peter Shaffer. The hilarity of blindness, of all things! A poor artist is all set for an important night: a meeting with his fiancee's colonel father and a rich art collector. Everything OK until the lights go out, his ex-girlfriend appears, the landlady gets drunk, and his next door neighbor becomes vindictive. Hilarious and well done by the Princeton Summer Theatre cast.
Jul 16. LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. A failing flower shop on Skid Row. Someone finds a strange flower that requires meat and blood to grow. Seymore, an assistant in the shop feeds it with a nasty dentist, the shop owner, and the dentist's girl friend. The show is so bad, it's funny. Can't understand how it became a perennial favorite summer entertainment.
Aug 10. BETRAYAL by Harold Pinter. That most overworked fictional marital tangle, the triangle, done by a master playwright, who shows emotion by trite expressions and nuances. Apparently, the play is taken from his own experiences in his first marriage. Riveting, nevertheless.

June 29. CITIZEN KANE (DVD), directed by and starring Orson Wells. Issued just before the war, it shows Orson in his early slim, good looking role as the publisher of the NY Inquirer and 20 % of the American press. The movie places his castle, Shangrila on a hilltop in Florida, of all places, rather than off the coast of California, where Hearst located his castle in the thirties. One of the greatest American films.
June 30. THE BIG SLEEP (DVD) starring Humphry Borgart as Phillip Marlow and Lauren Bacall. Murky plot, but plenty of geat dialog and electricity between the two stars. The principal script writer was William Faulkner! Humphry ran around in a two-seater, just like my tiny Plymouth in the fifties.
July 5. TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (DVD) starring Bogart and Walter Huston, the father of the director. One of Huston's early pictures with an overreaching moral: money doesn't bring happiness, only paranoia and death. Great black and white shots in the mountains of Mexico (or California ?).
Aug 4. SCOOP by Woody Allen at the Pit (Old name for the Garden Theater in Princeton). Woody and a gorgeous friend, prompted by a ghost (Lovejoy in the BBC series of that name), befriend a handsome London socialite and politician, who they claim is the tarrot card killer of a dozen or so blonde women. Totally unbelievable and filled with tired, pointless Woody Allen jokes. Ugh! On the other hand, the couple behind me laughed like the idiots they were.
Aug 7. THE SPIDER'S STRATAGEM by Bertolucci. A man returns to the provincial Italian town where his father, the leader of the local resistance to the fascists, was murdered in 1936. Except for his father's mistress, he finds a hostile town. He also finds that his father was not a lilly white anti-fascist, but an informer, who revealed a plot to kill Mussollini to the police. He then was assassinated by the resistance.
Aug 10. RAN (DVD) by Kurosawa. A re-telling of the King Lear story in Japan, this time the ungrateful offspring are men. However, the most vicious person in the mostly violent story is the wife of the #1 son, who pulls a knife in the bedchamber to force her husband to her will. He goes along; apparently the sex is great afterwards. A lot of bodies and dislocated skulls knocking around at the end of the film.
Aug 14. CONTEMPT by Godard. Brigitte Bardot is married to a writer. When an American producer Jack Palance flirts with her, he pushes her to go along with him. Her love is quickly transformed into contempt. The opening scene of the film shows her naked in bed with her husband. Godard claims that this scene was demanded by the American producer to push up the box office takings.
Aug 22. PRISONER OF THE MOUNTAINS (DVD). Two Russian soldiers are captured and held for ransom by Chechen guerillas. The intended exchange for a Chechen prisoner falls through in a bloody exchange of gun fire. The Chechens kill one of the soldiers, but not the other. Gorgeous views of the mountains.
Aug 24. RICHTER THE ENIGMA by Monsaingeon. One of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, Richter lived for music alone, ignoring the Soviet Communist Party--a miracle in itself. His musical association with other greats of that time, like Gould, Rubinstein, Rostopovich, Oistrakh and Casals are discussed and excerpts from their concerts are shown.
Sept. 12. UNFORGIVEN, staring Clint Eastwood as the reformed hired killer, who, dead-broke and fed up with raising kids and pigs, decides to kill two cowboys who have cut up a whore in Big Whiskey, Wyoming. When he is through, he has killed both cowboys and most of the law officers of Big Whiskey. Gritty, pitiless movie.
Sept 14. BARRY LYNDON, directed by Stanley Kubrick. Poor Irish lad joins the English army to fight the French on the continent. Steals the documents of a courier while he is swimming, then poses as an officer in the Prussian army (allies of the British against the French). Quickly uncovered by a Prussian officer, whose life he subsequently saves. Becomes an agent in the Prussian secret police, allies with an Irish gambler he should spy on, marries a rich heiress and settles down to the life of Reilly. Comes to a sad end when he is wounded by his titled stepson. Silly ass fires into the ground when it is his turn to fire in a duel.
Sept 26. SLEUTH, starring Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier. A takeoff on the classic English mystery story. Caine wants to marry Olivier's wife. Olivier, a popular mystery writer, humiliates Caine by a series of deceptions. Caine returns the favor. Who is standing at the end? Very articulate and witty, but false and contrived.