Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Deceived - 1991 **


A very poor offering from Goldie Hawn. This was a mediocre thriller with a mixture of paranoid tension and then boring sub-text. Hawn meets the man of her dreams (or so she thinks) and they get married. She then learns that he has perished in a car accident and is devastated. However, before long she is learning dreadful things about her seemingly perfect husband. Rather boring, the characters are all disfunctional and I really found the film dragged.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

It's Complicated - 2009 ****


I was seriously surprised by how funny this film was. I was expecting it to be a typical rom-com like all the others that have been churned out in the last few years but actually it was very amusing. Meryl Streep is wonderful, I don't think I've ever seen her in a film that I didn't like but Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin - what is going on with their faces??? They both seem like they have been drowned in botox from their forehead to their chin leaving this creepy slightly manic look that doesn't change regardless of what emotion they are trying to show. It is particularly obvious in Steve Martin which leads to some very disturbing scenes where he is stoned out of his head but still looks exactly the same as he did beforehand.
Streep and Baldwin are a divorced couple, Streep is now single and Baldwin is married to a woman that he cheated on Streep with along with inheriting a couple of her children. However, several awkward moments ensue and before long they are beginning an affair behind Baldwin's wife. Ironic, as now the first wife has become the mistress. Some very funny parts, some sentimental parts, and some downright bizarre parts, but all in all I think this film is one of the better comedies that has come out in America.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

(NOIR) Undercurrent - 1946 ****


'Undercurrent' is one of those films that grips you immediatly, lets you go and then grabs you again.
Some parts really had me on the edge of my seat and others had me snorting in laughter. Katherine Hepburn has a tendency to totally overract in some of her films and it was quite apparent in this as she manically ran around with wide eyes and clenched fists flinching everytime Robert Taylor said anything.
The story could rival 'Rebecca' in many ways, except this time, the focus of obsession is a missing/presumed dead brother, instead of a first wife. Geeky, plain Hepburn ,meets charming and handsome Taylor and they have a whirlwind romance ending in marriage. Before long however, Hepburn finds out that Taylor has a brother that she has never heard of. This sets the tone for a weird series of events that unravel as she tries to figure out the mystery surrounding a man that no one will talk about, that no one knows the whereabouts of, and that certain people believe has been murdered.. by her new husband.
Taylor is brilliant, and Mitchum puts in a very good appearance in the limited screen time he is given. Hepburn is good but tends to be a bit much after a while.

(NOIR) Witness to Murder - 1954 *** 1/2


My first film noir after a serious black and white film drought had to be a good one. 'Witness to Murder' seems to me to be a mix of a couple of films, most notably 'Sorry, Wrong Number' where Barbara Stanwyck also becomes embroiled in a murder plot, and of course 'Rear Window'. She's still a wonderful actress but something here seems to be lacking. 1954 and really most of the better noirs had been and gone, so trying to keep up the same level of tension was proving to be difficult. George Sanders is one of my favourites but even he seemed a tad past his peak. Unfortunate because I actually liked the storyline. A woman witnesses a murder across the way through her bedroom window but cannot get the police to believe her apart from one who takes a shine to her and is convinced that she is not insane. Interesting film, but not one of the best.