The Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak, 1946) B

A rather fascinating and creepy murder mystery done in the style of a film noir. The Spiral Staircase is about Helen, a mute servant (the underrated Dorothy McGuire) who everyone she works for is concerned that she'll be the next target of a murderer who goes after women with disabilities. The beginning gave me chills, especially when Helen is walking up to her employer's mansion and in the shadows you see a man moving around, getting ready to attack her. Just when he lunges she rushes into the mansion and you breathe a sigh of relief. A couple of minutes later though, when you see Helen walking around the house, you find the same man lurking in the shadows and your heart races again. The film quiets down for a bit, veering off into the world of melodrama. I just wish there had been a couple more hints in between then and when you discover who the murderer is (which is, admittedly, pretty obvious). Dorothy McGuire isn't given much to do in the beginning since Siodmak almost refuses to give her any close ups to let her act with her eyes, but towards the end she really shines. The terror and rising desperation is frightening to watch. At first, I was ambivalent towards Ethel Barrymore's performance- her first of two nominations acting in a bed- but eventually she won me over. Some of those sideways glances she gave McGuire were even creepier than the actual murderer. Barrymore probably only got the nomination because of her legendary status, but, for most the part, it was a worthy nomination.

The Killing Fields (Roland Joffe, 1984) C-

I had high hopes for this one, really I did. Unfortunately, everything about The Killing Fields seemed emotionally disconnected, especially during the times when it really needed to rely on that, and besides that, more often than not, I had no idea what was going on. The first 30 minutes were totally confusing as Sydney (Sam Waterson) and Pran (Dr. Haing S. Ngor) ran from place to place in Cambodia, taking pictures and getting news stories. The screenplay didn't help, because it didn't explain what they were doing well enough and it also got repetitious after awhile. Most of the film consisted of the same three scenes over and over again: (1) Sydney and Pran go to some place to write an article (2) Some catastrophe (military coup, taken hostage, etc) happens and they are forced to stay (3) Sydney and Pran, using their smarts, eventually get out of the situation by the skin of their teeth. Pran's eventual escape still remains a mystery to me because I have no idea how he left the prison camp (was that what he was in?) or who that guy who got Pran to speak French was and what purpose he served (how did he get that American money and map?) I seriously have no idea what the Academy was thinking when they nominated this for so many awards in 1984. The Best Picture nomination is vaguely understandable (quality aside, it is a heartwarming film about friendship and survival and all that bullshit) but Waterson should have been embarrassed that his nomination caused Steve Martin to be denied one for All of Me. Nothing about the performance points in the direction that he was required to act. He yells, he talks with Pran, he gets emotional, he misses his friend....that's about all that goes on here. Any mildly competent actor could have pulled off this performance. Ngor's nomination (and eventual win) can be partly justified- that last hour does belong to him- but, again, nothing really required him to act that much. All he has to do is wear that same stone-face and recite some lines in broken English.

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) C+

Separately, the three short films that compromise Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow would be considered great films in their own right. Together, bundled up in one larger film, they don't work as well. Why? Because, as a whole, we are supposed to find the connections between the three stories and understand why they were placed together. Unfortunately, the only connection that exists between them is the superficial fact that Italian sex symbols Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni play the leads. The first segment, Adelina, lets its one joke run on a bit too long but its joke is quite humorous. Anna, the best of the three, works so amazingly because it suggests and hints at the relationship between Mastroianni and Loren rather than come right out and say and that ending is flat out genius. The third story, Mara, is the silliest of the two- hooker Loren and client Mastroianni must help stop a seminary student from leaving to go in the Foreign Legion- but it's a quite a bit of fun, Mastroianni has never been sillier (although Too Bad She's Bad is pretty close) and Loren's striptease was legendary. I wish these three short films had been released separately instead of lumped together in this film so I could possibly enjoy them more and make a stronger case for the film as a whole

Adelina C+; Anna A-; Mara B

Charlie Bartlett (Jon Poll, 2008) D+

Yet another film that started promising but quickly turned to shit mostly due to an awful screenplay. I thought the opening was great- charming, witty and exquisitely well-handed by Anton Yelchin and Hope Davis. Then, Yelchin's Charlie went off to public high school and it went downhill from there. I can't exactly pinpoint where I started to grow bored with the whole thing but eventually I just wanted the film to end. The screenplay is basically full of subplots with no main plot to guide them. And the abrupt changes in tone seem to suggest that the writer didn't know if they were going for a dark comedy or a slight teenage dramedy or what ever else. It's such a shame because the cast is pretty damn good: Yelchin, at least until the very end, guides his Charlie Bartlett well through the tedium of the script and he very nearly emerges a symbol of teenagedom today; Davis is as droll as ever as Charlie's mother, giving a fine comedic performance from a character that isn't given much to do besides be a kooky mother; Robert Downey, Jr., for most of the movie, is completely wasted since the screenwriter obviously didn't know what to do with his character (it isn't until the very end when he gets some good dialogue to work with that Downey is actually able to do something with his character).

Definitely, Maybe (Adam Brooks, 2008) C-

Definitely, Maybe has the beginnings of a very good romantic comedy. Unfortunately, there isn't enough imagination to sustain the greatness. Will (Ryan Reynolds) is in the process of getting divorced and his young daughter (Abigail Breslin) wants to hear the story her parent's relationship. Will doesn't want to tell her, believing the story too long and complicated for her, but after much persistence, he relents and shares the story with her. Basically, the story revolves around Will's relationships with three women: Emily (Elizabeth Banks), April (Isla Fisher) and Summer (Rachel Weisz). What I loved about the beginning was the fact that it kept going back and forth between the past and the present and Breslin was given the ability to comment on each of the women and what was happening. After awhile, though, the film stays stuck in the past, leaving out Breslin's hilarious commentary, and loses all pretense of being a comedy since nothing is even remotely "ha ha" funny. The 110 minute run time is simply too long to sustain the flimsy premise and by the last half-hour Definitely, Maybe becomes tedious to the point that I wanted to turn it off. Two other things I hated: (1) Breslin's (who's talent lies in portraying an ordinary kid) character being turned in to a smarter-than-the-parents, pretentious, Dakota Fanning type and (2) The utter disregard the costume designer had for dressing the actors in 90's fashion. Watch The Player again and you'll see that men weren't wearing those types of suits in '92. And the women's costumes were even more laughable because they were straight out of today and nothing about them resembled the 90's at all. It would be like doing a film about the 80's business world and not dressing the women in sport coats with shoulder pads. If you're going to set a film in the past. have the decency to get the clothes right. Besides Breslin, the shining star of Definitely, Maybe has to be Isla Fisher. I loved her in Wedding Crashers and here she proved that wasn't a fluke. She's still a little kooky, but she turns it down from that movie and crafts it so it fits her character here. Fisher could have phoned it in like Weisz and Banks, but that was some fine acting going on there.

The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003) D-

This movie is so awful, so painful, so poorly executed that it's almost indescribable. I sat there for 80 minutes just waiting for something interesting to happen or for a plot point to be explained and carried out and couldn't believe it when absolutely none of that happened. The film gets points for trying something different- almost no dialogue is spoken during the course of the movie- but there needed to be songs or title cards or something that shaped the plot and spelled out what was happening. The Triplets of Belleville is about a bicyclist who is kidnapped and his grandmother who, with the help of a group of elderly musical sisters, track him down and rescue him, but we are never told why the bicyclist is kidnapped or how the grandmother knows who the kidnapper is when she sees him in the nightclub. And that preposterous car chase at the end made me want to stab toothpicks in my eyes and lick a frogsicle; I understand it's a cartoon but those cars flipped over way too easily and the escape was nearly anti-climactic. After witnessing this horrific mess of a film, I can't believe this was so widely acclaimed back in 2003- more proof that sometimes movie critics are pretentious jerk-offs.

Caesar and Cleopatra (Gabriel Pascal, 1946) B-

Forget the MGM-lite spectacle and Pascal's tedious and uncinematic direction: the real reason to see Caesar and Cleopatra is for Claude Rains' and Vivien Leigh's dynamic performances. Just when you think you've seen it all from these two, they surprise you yet again with the depth of their skills. Rains makes his Caesar instantly likeable and charms us into understanding why Cleopatra falls under his spell. He acts as a sort of Henry Higgins, transforming the demure and innocent Cleopatra into the glamorous, authoritative Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. The beginning of Leigh's performance is a little strange. Seeing her as a naive waif after Scarlett O'Hara was a bit of a shock. It isn't until Caesar takes her under his wing, when she starts combining the naivity with the hardness of the older woman, that it becomes a full fledged performance. The way she combines these polar opposites and switches them on and off at the drop of a hat is astounding.

A Hole in the Head (Frank Capra, 1959) D

I'm not going to lie- I'm a huge fan of Frank Capra. For some reason, his cheesy, unashamedly uplifting "Capracorn" styles work on this little ole cynic. This, combined with the fact that this film boasts a magnificent cast including Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson, Thelma Ritter, Eleanor Parker and Carolyn Jones, should have assured A Hole in the Head greatness. Imagine my surprise when it didn't. A Hole in the Head tells the story of a widowed owner of a sleazy hotel (Frank Sinatra) with a son who he loves more than anything. He's behind on his mortgage payments and about to get thrown out so he tries to get money from his rich brother (Edward G. Robinson) and his wife (Thelma Ritter). They tell him that they'll give him the money if he'll settle down and marry a woman they set him up with (Eleanor Parker). A Hole in the Head is supposed to play like a comedy- the problem is that none of the jokes are even funny (I take that back, one is: Thelma Ritter's line reading at the end "I don't understand...they're so poor and so happy!"). The repeated gag of Robinson falling back on the low chair wasn't funny the first time, so why would I need to see it repeated five or six times? Frank Sinatra was never the greatest actor (even in his most acclaimed performances in From Here to Eternity and The Man With the Golden Arm something was missing), but A Hole in the Head reveals his limitations. He is the last actor I would have picked to play the father; his tough, man's man persona doesn't fit well into the role (I would have rather seen someone like Rock Hudson in the role). A Hole in the Head, in the end, completely wastes the aforementioned dream cast. The actressexual in me loves Ritter, Parker and Jones the most here, but they really aren't given much to do; it's Sinatra and that annoying kid's show unfortunately. Random rant: that "High Hopes" sequence was one of the most awkwardly handled musical scenes I've ever seen. I can suspend disbelief if the entire film is a musical, but it makes absolutely no sense when you have one musical number in a two hour movie.

Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) C-

I'm not familiar with the original play by Eugene O'Neill that Desire Under the Elms is based on, but I believe that it deserves a far better treatment than what Mann delivers here. The story- a young man lusting after his aged father's hot new wife and their ensuing battle over the land they live on- should have interested me more, but writer Irwin Shaw and director Delbert Mann completely butcher the power of it by not bothering to adapt the play cinematically. The film looks as if it was shot from the audience point of view with absolutely no imagination: you can obviously tell how the different scenes are set up in the stage production. The scenery looks so shoddy and cheap that it could have been knocked over with a breath of air. Burl Ives basically does his whole Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Big Daddy schtick that comes across as hammy beyond belief this time. Sophia Loren is good, but not quite at her Two Women peak. Anthony Perkins, however, proves here that he was a good actor before Psycho and that it wasn't just a fluke. It's no Norman Bates but it's quite a fine performance.

Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939) B (x2)

Leo McCarey's Love Affair has the makings of one of the Great American Romances, but ultimately ends up just short of its lofty intentions. The main culprit here is the general uneveness of the screenplay and McCarey's direction. The film starts off fantastically with a charming introduction between Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne that's every bit as witty as anything in McCarey's earlier The Awful Truth. It completely sucked me in and left me wondering if I had underrated this film the last time I saw it. Then the film lost me when Boyer takes Dunne to meet his grand-mere Janou (Maria Ouspenskaya). The whole sequence doesn't really fit in with anything and those final lines between the two women which go something like "I can't walk very far. I have to stop at the edge of my sanctuary." "Well, thanks for letting me trespass into your little world." was super cringe-worthy. Just when I was ready to write the film off completely, Boyer and Dunne suck me back in with their chemistry back on the boat. It's a glorious couple of minutes, but then they are forced to split up again and McCarey can't seem to maintain the same momentum when they are apart. The next 20 minutes were decent, if not exactly noteworthy, which lead to a fantastic finale. The dialogue is a little over-written, but Boyer and Dunne are careful not to overdo anything. They keep the emotions grounded in reality, making their reunion all the more affecting.