evanston_dad

A cute Fred Astaire movie that plays like an extended version of a "Three's Company" episode. Everything revolves around everyone misunderstanding each other and mistaking someone for someone else.

Joan Fontaine is the love interest and she's boring, but George Burns and Gracie Allen are a hoot in supporting comic relief roles. There's not much that's memorable in the way of dancing given that this is a Fred Astaire movie, though a number set in a carnival funhouse won the strange and short-lived Oscar category of Best Dance Direction, an award that was given for only three years in the 1930s before it was retired. The film also received a nomination for its art direction.

Grade: B+

"Matewan" is a gripping movie about the war between a town of coal miners and the corporation enslaving them in the West Virginia of the 1920s. But man is it bleak. I don't think I'd ever want to watch it again. It's yet another story about those with money and power trampling over those without, a story that never changes and never gets less enraging.

My biggest problem with the film is that the actors meant to represent the company play it so evil that it almost becomes unrealistic. These are goon show caricatures rather than real men, and it always makes me queasy when a movie has me cheering to see violent and bloody things done to people it has manipulated me into hating.

But the rest of the movie stays pretty grounded and is superbly acted by the likes of Chris Cooper, Mary McDonell, David Strathairn, and James Earl Jones, who has a small role but gets a couple of terrific scenes.

Haskell Wexler received an Oscar nom for the film's cinematography.

Grade: A-

"Gloria" is just begging to be a tense little potboiler, but it's unfortunately directed by John Cassavetes, who has no sense for how to give a movie like this forward momentum. He seems to want to focus on the relationship between Gloria and the little boy she's protecting, which makes sense given his expertise in character-driven movies, but there's nothing to the relationship, so it goes nowhere. The child actor is terrible, never once convincing us that he's in danger, and really Gena Rowlands isn't that great either. I've always thought she was an actress who's hard to warm to, a real detriment in this movie. Cassavetes can't figure out what to do with the script, so it devolves into a repetitive and tedious series of scenes featuring Gloria and the kid running randomly through NYC streets and just happening to run into the very people they're running from literally everywhere they go.

Rowlands received the second of her two career Oscar noms for this performance.

Grade: C+