Coming Home (1978)

 This film was both brilliant, realistic, tragic and disappointing.

It is 1968, and the US is at war with Vietnam. Sally Bender Hyde (Jane Fonda) decides, more on a whim, to volunteer at a hospital which treats wounded veterans. Her own husband, Bob (Bruce Dern) is a captain and is now overseas himself and is proud to serve. And he doesn't want her to work while he's away, but she clearly has other ideas. The scene when she goes to volunteer is a scene in which you cannot take your eyes off the screen, not even for a millisecond. She walks into Luke Martin's (Jon Voight's) urine bag and he flips out. Turns out that Sally went to high school with Luke (what are the odds?) and she befriends him as he slowly recovers and gets released and starts to protest the war. The two even begin an affair while Bob remains overseas before finally returning home with a minor injury. But he's not himself anymore, drinking too much and still sleeping with his pistol, which doesn't freak Sally out as much as you would think. 

The ending is both predictable and ambiguous. While Luke tries to urge high schoolers to take the war and their involvement in it seriously, while Sally buys steaks for a cookout and Bob strips his clothes and goes into the ocean, just like in at least two versions of A Star is Born, so that way of implying that he was committing suicide is just stupid and besides, there was already a suicide, the brother of Sally's friend, Vi (Penelope Milford), Billy (Robert Carradine, years before he was the father on the Lizzie McGuire show), who is suffering from sort of mental breakdown and commits suicide in the worst way, as his friends bang on the office door, desperate for a nurse to come around and shoots a syringe full of air into his veins, dying by the time help finally arrives. So while Bob killing himself may have been realistic as he refused Sally's help, livid that she cheated on him while he was away, upset that he belongs nowhere, but I still felt that another suicide was just too much for this film. 

Despite my issues with the ending, the acting (especially Voight) is brilliant and four of actors were nominated for Oscars (with Voight and Fonda winning), and they were all well-deserved awards. And the film is painfully realistic, with the gritty hospital scenes and difficult performances that seem effortless to the actors is so small feet, too bad the ending was just too problematic for me. Grade: B+

Side Notes:

-This film also shows how difficult it was to be in a wheelchair before all the regulations they have today.

-We never truly learn how Luke and Bob got injured in the war. 

-The weird subplot of Luke being spied upon should also been developed more, though it was a twist the film did need. 

-The subject of children is never discussed in this film.

-When Bob returns from the war, he reacts more strongly to Sally's hairstyle change than to her new car. 

Heaven Can Wait (1978)

 Well, this film wasn't completely spectacular, more like an elevated rom-com with a superb, white cast. 

Apparently, after you die, you board a giant white plane in the sky and finish your journey. Joe Pendleton's (Warren Beatty's) problem is that he was taken prematurely, by some over-zealous escort (Buck Henry) and can't return to his actual body because he's been cremated (so maybe I shouldn't get cremated after all) so he's placed inside billionaire Leo Farnsworth and initially is livid as Farnsworth is a total racist asshole, set to destroy an entire village by building another, perhaps unnecessary factory, which is how he meets Betty Logan (Julie Christie). However, Joe was a quarterback and is desperate to get back to fighting shape, so he vows to change how his millions of companies are run and then trains like a fool, buys the Rams for a price far, far more than they are worth and nearly makes it back, only to have it all dashed away again as Leo's wife, Julie (Dyan Cannon) and executive secretary, Tony (Charles Grodin) finally succeed in killing him. So he's given another body, that of Rams quarterback Tom Jarrett (the one who replaced him in the role), and he's memory's erased but he gets the girl anyway. 

Now, despite the unconventional plotline, the idea is good and does have several good twists and the acting is good but I feel the film could have made a bigger impact if Joe focused more on changing Leo's businesses for the good of all people, not just focus on his own desires as he was finally in the position to do something good. Still, Joe did his research, studying the pamphlets as though they were his play book, but can he really trust the board to change the entire corporation without his input? However, you do kind of just have to go with it and the journey is an interesting one, even though I would have done this film differently. Grade: B+

Side Notes:

-Vincent Gardenia is the bizarre detective investigating Leo's disappearance and focuses his questioning largely on Leo's sudden dislike of hats. 

-You could easily compare running a company to winning a football game. 

-Julia's reaction upon seeing her husband is actually alive is just great.

-Jack Warden is also great as Max Corkle, Joe's trainer and was rewarded with an Oscar nomination as was Beatty and Cannon. None of them won. 

-I don't see how Tony thought he was going to get away with shooting Leo, his final plan was just ridiculous. 

Chinatown (1974)

 This was another excellent film, with a painfully sad ending.

J.J. Gittes (a great Jack Nicholson) is a private detective in 1930s Los Angeles. Currently, the city is going through a drought and the water company has different ideas on how to solve the problem. Noah Cross (John Huston) wants to funnel the water into the valley to feed the orange crops and incorporate the valley into the city while the mild-mannered and seldom seen Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) wants to give the water to the people so he's promptly killed. And to complicate matters, Mulwray's wife, Evelyn (Faye Dunaway) hires Jake to determine if her husband is cheating on him. And then, they sleep together and her husband is barely cold in his grave, but that's before Jake finds the proof he needs on who killed Hollis and just when you expect it to be Evelyn, and that she lied to you all the time, but she's not a murderer. Her father is, and a rapist. But the ending is sad, as the city will lose, the drought will get worse, the bad guy gets away with murder because he has the police in his pocket and Evelyn dies. Jake is let off for unknown reasons. So yeah, I hate movies that have sad endings all the way around. Still, the screenplay was tight (it won the film's sole Oscar) and the acting was superb. Roman Polanski truly weaved together a brilliant film despite all his personal struggles. Grade: A-

Side Notes:

-Polanski portrays the man who sliced up Nicholson's nose, in a truly horrified realistic scene.

-The scene where Evelyn admits that the alleged 'other woman' is actually her daughter/sister Katherine (Belinda Palmer) is also a great scene though the truth is truly revolting. 

-Jake does want the truth, though he is also money hungry, just like the rest of them. 

Lenny (1974)

This is a superb, interesting film portraying the controversial and troubled life of randy comic Lenny Bruce (Dustin Hoffman, brilliant). It takes him from a struggling comic to him ruining himself with all his arrests due to profanity and his dissent into drugs and lethal overdose. While he starts out relatively mundane, his act quickly turns dirty but hilarious after he meets and, in short order, marries Honey (Valerie Perrine) a stripper. He also brings attention to current events and tries to call out how stupid racism is (though he uses the 'n' word to do so, something that would not fly these days). However, because of his use of profanities, he's arrested which creates some interesting scenes in the courtroom, including some that are just downright bizarre. 

However, this film is also unique in the fact that it mixes recordings of the people surrounding Lenny's life as the police try to solve his sudden death, just before he was about to report to prison and the film is done in nearly a documentary style, realistic to a fault, with some great editing (which was denied an Oscar nomination) in gritty black and white but you don't miss a beat (though the DVD didn't include subtitles which is just a crime) and while the ending is painfully sad, this film manages to tell Lenny's story portraying him as a flawed man, and Lenny wouldn't have had it any other way. Grade: A-

Side Notes:

-Dustin Hoffman is completely brilliant but props to the unknown Valerie Perrine as his wife, that phone call between the two is a scene of pure emotional acting as those you were watching the actual scene between a heart-broken and devastated Lenny and Honey, who is likewise heart-broken and going through withdrawal.

-The supporting cast is also full of unknowns which only adds to the documentary feel of the film. 

-Lenny must have been left-handed as Hoffman uses his left hand to write something down in one of the courtroom scenes. 

-Also Clarence Thomas makes a cameo appearance as one of Lenny's lawyer. 

The Apartment (1960)

 This is another gem from Billy Wilder, even though the film is rather dated.

C.C. Baxter (a brilliant Jack Lemmon) is a nameless, faceless guy who works in the accounting department is a sea of thousands at an insurance company but he rises above the rest by offering his apartment to the executives for them to carry on their extra-martial affairs so he can get a promotion and his plan seems to be working, until he realizes that one of mistresses is elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley Maclaine), whom he has a giant crush on, so much so that he's looked up her card and knows all of her personal information, which isn't creepy or anything. Fran is having an affair with Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), the big boss on the 27th floor. But this isn't the first affair Mr. Sheldrake has had, and when Fran discovers this, she attempts suicide and nearly dies in Baxter's bed. Fortunately, his neighbor, Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen) is a doctor which saves him. And her. She survives, Baxter gets another promotion and Mr. Sheldrake's wife leaves him, so everything seems to be working out until Fran learns that Baxter quits his job, refusing to sit on the sidelines as the unhealthy affair continues. And that is the trigger Fran needs. 

Now, I won't completely spoil the ending, as the screenplay is a clever one, as Billy Wilder is extremely talented in both writing and directing. And there are certainly both funny and heartfelt scenes with wicked dialogue and effortless performances of a time not long ago, all but forgotten, life before computers or even remote controls for the TV, using a tennis racket as a pasta strainer, the simple life, although it wasn't all that simple for Baxter and Fran, but the found each other, in the end. Grade: A-

Side Notes:

-While dated, this film still manages to be solid, showing you how life was back then. It is just shocking seeing all those people in an office setting, doing God knows what, researching insurance.

-You could apparently get booze delivered to your apartment in New York City in the 1960s, who knew?

-Who plays gin rummy these days?

-It is sad that Baxter had no family worried about him on Christmas.

-Baxter should really clean out his sofa more often.

-At the office Christmas party, there are tons of couples making out with each other. It's shocking.

Sunrise at Campobello (1960)

 First of all, the film title is misleading. While there is scene with a beautiful sunset, a sunrise at Campobello is shown, in one of the last perfect moments in the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Ralph Bellamy) before he is stricken with a 'mild' case of polio, never to walk without assistance again. This film deals with how he battles the disease and slowly returns to politics again, with great success. Of course, the path isn't easy for him despite the excellent he gets from his wife, Eleanor (Greer Garson), whom he calls Babs, and friend, Louis Howe (Hume Cronyn). Still, his devoted mother, Sara (Ann Shoemaker) still babies him and feels that he's pushing himself far too much. Even the children, especially the oldest two, get their own personalities, which is also lovely to see. 

Now, while the film is far too long (nearly two and a half hours), the acting is impeccable though both Garson and Bellamy are easily a decade too old for their parts but they excel. Bellamy was robbed of an Oscar nomination while Garson treasured hers. I also found this film gave us an intimate portrait of the inner lives of the Roosevelts though it is naturally sugar-coated for Hollywood purposes. But it does show his mother in a meddling, nearly menacing light, which by all respects, appears to be accurate. Still, the film is worth watching for the performances and scenery alone as both are brilliant. Grade: B+

Side Notes:

-Missy LeHand (Jean Hagen) a long-term mistress of Franklin does appear as his loyal legal assistant.

-It apparently was easy to fool the public before social media. 

Georgetown (2019)

 This is a bizarre little film, almost too strange to be true. 

Ulrich Mott (Christoph Waltz) is a fake diplomat, worming his way into the elite society of Washington DC, mostly through his much older wife, and World War II survivor Elsa Brecht (Vanessa Redgrave), who also happens to be a homophobe, which does come into play in the two pivotal scenes in the films. The only one who thinks he's full of shit is Elsa's professor daughter, Amanda (Annette Bening). And then Elsa dies. And while she's ninety-one, which is super old, she didn't die of natural causes, it was murder and Ulrich is the prime suspect and is put on trial, trying to use his government immunity as he feels that she was killed because of his connections. What and who Ulrich really is is slowly revealed throughout the film and that ending twist is a killer (unfortunately for Elsa, literally) and while it's super crazy, it's also just crazy enough to be true and the film is based on real events so this film does blur the lines between fiction and reality. But the acting is solid and it is interesting as you have to know the truth or at least how this film ends, even though the screenplay is a little bizarre. You just kind of have to roll with it. Grade: B

Side Notes:

-This is the second film where Annette Bening and Vanessa Redgrave portrayed mother and daughter; the first was the far superior Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool.

-Corey Hawkins does what he can with his bland role of defense attorney, dealing with the volatile Mott. 

North by Northwest (1959)

 This is the film where Cary Grant just had to get the girl.

Roger Thornhill (Grant) is a marketing executive in New York City but is mistaken for another man, and his perfectly structured life spins dangerously out of control. He's nearly killed and then arrested for drunk driving when he was actually kidnapped and drugged and then he is hellbent to figure out who this George Kaplan who is mistaken for actually is. The truth is revealed to the viewer early on so it's no spoiler: George Kaplan is a fictional person made up to try and capture Soviet spy Philip VanDamm (James Mason), illegally trading secrets to the enemy and apparently making a fortune doing so, based on his house on top of Mount Rushmore. 

On the run for the alleged murder of an innocent man who just happened to have an empty house, Roger runs into Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint, brilliant) and the two hit it off and she even helps him and they have some epic banter straight out of a rom-com. Turns out, though, she's a double spy so things get sticky really quick and just when Roger is given a chance to resume his normal life, he refuses to surrender Eve to VanDamm as she is innocent and he's sick of her being used by someone that's not himself. 

But this being Hollywood and Cary Grant, he miraculously saves the girl and all is right in the world. Upon watching this film for a second time (the first was easily fourteen years ago), I was able to follow the plot much better and pick up on so many double entendre lines this time around. However, I felt the one scene as Eve and Philip prepare to fly away with Roger desperately trying to save her is way too long and then at the end, there is a giant leap in time to get to the epilogue so the plot pacing is a bit annoying at times, but this film is fully solid and great though something like this wouldn't happen this day in age what with all the social media and cell phones around; however, this was a great thriller without a doubt. Still, I wish Grant didn't always have to be the hero. It would have been nice for the girl to save herself, but this was 1959, Hollywood wasn't there yet. Fortunately, now they would be. Grade: A-

Side Notes:

-Jessie Royce Landis, who plays Grant's mother, is actually basically the same age as her son and looks younger thanks to her vivid red hair.

-One of my favorite lines is Eve's "It's going to be a long night and I don't particularly like the book I've started." 

-Roger has two ex-wives, I wonder what the real story is behind that. 

-If I could get my own, private cabin in a train, I might travel more.

-Food service on that train is remarkably quick.

-Also of note, no minorities have roles save the waiters on the dining cab of the train, which is unacceptable this day in age. 

Some Like it Hot (1959)

 This film just proves that love has no boundaries. 

Musicians Jerry (the brilliant Jack Lemmon) and Joe (Tony Curtis) are constantly down on their luck, some through their own making (Joe loves gambling before paying the bills) and some through crazy circumstance as it is Chicago during the prohibition. They escape the claws of death so many times as, despite all their stupidity, they are clever. 

Disgusted as women, they flee to Florida but Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) is also in the band and complicates things for the two men immensely. Naturally, she's beautiful and talented and both Daphne (Lemmon) and Josephine (Curtis) fall in love with her but once they arrive in Florida, a wealthy divorced, older man, Osgood (Joe E. Brown) latches himself onto Daphne and eventually even Daphne falls under his spell and accepts his proposal without thinking of the complications it would bring. And Joe has yet another disguise of his own to get Sugar to finally fall in love with a man though this one isn't good for her just like all the others. There is tons of brilliant dialogue and sticky situations throughout, and an ending that cannot be forgotten, and the acting just happens to be top-notch also.

Now, while the film has not dated the best, as you have two straight men disguised as men, not because they are struggling with their sexuality but rather because they feel that it is a necessity for them, and this creates numerous awkward situations (as it was designed) but all that aside, this film only further cements why Billy Wilder was a true genius. Grade: A-

Side Notes:

-Jack Lemmon was only one in the cast who received an Oscar nomination for his multi-layered performance and he was clearly the best (why is his greatness largely forgotten today?), though Monroe was great also. She was a much better actress than given credit for, just great in the painfully awkward to watch Bus Stop. 

-The costumes and lightning are great. Nothing in this film was done by accident.

-Despite the prohibition being present, there is a lot of alcohol drunk in this film.