Hello Down There

The only reason to indulge in this bit of pointless nostalgia is to see Richard Dreyfuss as a punk teen. I'm almost convinced.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Boy (2016)

Image
I mentioned to a digi-friend the other day that I'd watched this film, and he said he had too, but that the twist was obvious. I get irrationally angry at people who think that that is an appropriate critique. It's a film. Of course it's obvious. What was he expecting? So I told him that if you want unexpected, your best bet is real life. And then I thought about what made me upset. I enjoyed watching the film. I actually looked up the plot on Wikipedia so I knew what to expect. I like films better when they're spoiled for me. And while I understand that lots of people are not that way at all, I wonder if, when we complain that we saw something coming, what we mean is that the film bored us so much that our minds skittered ahead to fill in the blanks. For filmmakers, the ramifications of that possibility are that their burden is to keep the viewer's mind engaged in the present: interested in what is on screen rather than trying to create suspense with emptiness....
Read more

Strictly Ballroom

Image
 I hate the cover on this one. Oh well. Anyway, I could watch this movie twenty times. I probably have watched it twenty times, and every time I'd say the same thing: Excellent! This film is an older version of the typical makeover romantic comedy (beginning weirdly as a kind of mocumentary), but with Australian ballroom dancing featuring heavily. He's an open amateur and champion, and she's a beginner, but she has the attitude he needs to be his best self. The themes of overcoming fear and the frustrations of the older generation resonated strongly with me as an adolescent, and I recommend it to any young person on the verge of a big decision. As filming goes, it's a dangerous proposition. The costuming, steeped in all the tackiness of eighties ballroom dancing (and Australia), can be truly off-putting. The multi-culturalism works well, though, and balances and grounds the flashiness with some real depth. The dancing is all spectacularly done, and the acting work...
Read more

If a Man Answers

Image
This film was remarkably amusing. The acting was certainly adequate to the task of a light comedy, and the scenes had a sort of fluffy chemistry that kept me laughing. Although this 50's flick makes a good attempt at equality between newlyweds Chantal (Sandra Dee) and Eugene (Bobby Darin), I still felt the ending erred on the side of the female, balanced only by the portrayal of vamp Tina (Stefanie Powers). If the film had been more about individuals, I'm not sure I would have worried so much about the battle of the sexes, but as it stood, the male and female characters seemed to line up into teams - the mother helping her daughter, and the fathers helping their son, each gender keeping secrets and using strategies against the other. The coloring and camera style smacked strongly of the fifties, and I felt a little as if I'd stepped into some thick fantasy in chiffon and chintz, but that seems to be a characteristic of the age/genre. As a relative feminist in some are...
Read more