March comes in with the Lionesses:
Roberta (1935) Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Randolph Scott. Roberta's is a high fashion shop in Paris, and Dunne is the manager. Fred and his band come to Paris looking for work. Ginger is posing as royalty. Scott is ---- Scott, posing as a football player and the nephew of Roberta.! Who cares? It is the Jerome Kern music and the dancing we want to see. One of the loveliest songs "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" is done straight - no gimmicks - by Dunne and reprised for our kids to dance to. Other highlights: Lovely To Look At, Yesterdays, and I Won't Dance. Dunne is luminous. Just see it! 8/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026942/
The Razors Edge (1946) Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, Anne Baxter, John Payne. Somerset Maugham(played by Herbert Marshall) story of Vet returning after WWI and finding his life meaningless. He breaks up with his fiancee and goes off searching - for he knows not what. Sorry to say it is as boring now as when I saw it in 1946 as a teen ager. But Power is good to look at; Webb great as a snob; Gene hateful as a spoiled deb who never grows up. But Baxter is the tension and heart of the film. Strung like an arrow in a bow, who finally is launched into eternity. Gene and Anne's scenes together show women as heartless as they come and as vulnerable. 8/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038873/
In the Heat of The Night (1967) Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant. Great film about a police detective from Philadelphia who is accused of a murder in a small Mississippi town. When the sheriff talks to his superiors, he lets Mr Tibbs go and over the next few days and nights forms a grudging partnership to solve the crime. Whole cast is top notch with Grant's rich mans wife, on the edge of hysteria because of the racism when all she wants is her husbands killer found, perfect. Holding on, until like she says "I can take my engineers and get out of this town." 9/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061811/
Z (1969) Yves Montand, Irene Papas, John-Louis Trintignant. Great film showing how fascism or any other 'ism' takes control and manages what the citizens see and hear and read. Frightening. About the turmoil in Greece and how it happened. Almost like a newsreel. 6/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065234/
Alex & Emma (2003) Kate Hudson, Luke Wilson. He's a novelist who gambles and owes a fortune to mobsters who will kill him if he doesn't pay up. He has a year to write a best seller or he's a goner.. She is a stenographer who comes to his apartment thinking it is a law office. He needs to dictate as fast as possible. Will she or won't she stay and work? Will they or won't they fall for each other? Ninety minutes and all will be known. 6/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318283/
Flightplan (2005) Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean, and in a small role, Matt (White Collar) Bomer. Okay mystery story of a child gone missing. Or is she? Is her Mother having a breakdown? The air marshall is assigned to help. Then when the crew decides she is nuts and dangerous, to guard her. But this is no usual Mom. She is a designer of these big suckers and knows all the systems. Interesting, but is not as exciting as is supposed to be. Great effects. 8/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408790/
Brideshead Revisited (2008) Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Emma Thompson, Hayley Atwell. Great cinematography. A young mans climb up the social scales and how he affects others and what it does to him. 7/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412536/
Happy Ever Afters (2009) Shown on Sundance Ch. Filmed in Ireland with all Irish cast. Quirky woman and her daughter are part of a wedding party. The wedding reception is held at a hotel which has also booked another wedding party at the same time in another banquet hall. There is intermingling and some hostility among all the guests and wedding parties. Entertaining. 6/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1324053/
Mild weather for February in the Heartland USA. Hope that doesn't mean storms for March.
Oscar time and I have seen only one nominee for best pic - The Help. I was happy for Octavia.
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