Lamour, Loy, & The Cats Meow---

Recently I watched:

The Hurricane (1937) Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith, Raymond Massey, Thomas Mitchell. John Ford's The Hurricane is still marvelous film making. Story of the Polynesian sailor being mistreated by the French authorities and the effect his continued escapes from prison has on his sentence, is hard to take. But in typical Hollywood fashion, we get a somewhat happy ending. Lamour and Hall are beautiful to look at, and Astor is too. Mitchell does his usual drunken friend. Aubrey Smith is a good priest, and Massey a fine villain. And that storm! It's a doozy. 8/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029030/

Another Thin Man (1939) William Powell, Myrna Loy, C. Aubrey Smith, Virginia Grey. The one with the baby birthday party thrown by the gangsters. Smith shouts all his lines and is very annoying. But 'Mommy' Loy and Powell are great, as usual. I watch it whenever it is on TCM and it is in my permanent collection. 8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031047/

The Cats Meow (2001) Kirsten Dunst, Edward Herrmann, Cary Elwes, Eddie Izzard, Jennifer Tilly. William Hearst, Marion Davies, Charlie Chaplin, Louella Parsons, and assorted other names in 1924 Hollywood go on a yachting holiday where someone is shot. It's the Jazz Age and these are careless and rich and empty people, spoiled by the adulation of the times. Dunst as Davies is darling. Herrmann as Hearst is sad and a boor. Chaplin is a lecher. Parsons is a blackmailer and as annoying as she was into the 1940's when I used to listen to her on radio. The costumes, set decoration and wonderful songs of the score are just wonderful. Enjoyable. 8/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266391/

Black Swan (2010) Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel. A portrait of a bi-polar dancer's descent into madness. I'm not sure if the end is another of her delusions or is intended to be real. My feeling - the director wants us to interpret it as we will. The fantasies that seem so real to Nina are increasingly more terrifying to her. Her controlling Mother has tried to keep her daughter childlike and along with the pressures to be perfect as a ballerina, have driven her to seek escape. Portman is very good in the role and deserves her awards. The production values are first rate. More a tale of mental illness than a dancers story, I rate it an - 8/10. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0947798/


Wall Street (1987) Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen, Daryl Hannah. 7/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094291/
And;
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) Michael Douglas, Shia LeBeouf, Carey Mulligan, Frank Langella. 6/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1027718/
I watched these back to back on HBO. As we are benefiting from the great money men gambling with other peoples money and driving our whole system to bankruptcy, I thought it was timely to see how Oliver Stone updated his story. Not true. He ends his new version with everyone reconciled and, more or less, happy. Nothing about the wrecking of others lives. LaBeouf seems like a high school kid, so was not too believable as a shark. Douglas as Gordan Gekko, is perfect as a barracuda. As Larry The Liquidator says in "Other Peoples Money" "It's a game. Washington can change the rules, but we don't go away. We adapt and the game goes on." What a world. What a country.

Cast does well with the script in Money Never Sleeps, especially Langella. Mulligan is fine too, as Gekko's daughter, Winnie.

Not the hard hitting take on the gamblers of Wall Street I thought Stone would deliver.