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jonathan-trapp
Reviews
Baby Doll (1956)
it's getting' hot in here,...!
Tennessee Williams' first original screenplay-- a comedy, albeit a black or at least charcoal gray one-- and the movie simultaneously was banned from theaters after one week (led by denouncement by the Catholic Legion of Decency) while simultaneously garnering four Academy Award nominations. If that doesn't raise your interest, let me tell you more. It has all the High Southern Gothic trappings of a Tennessee story-- lust, old deluded Southern belles, beauty, despair, illusion vs. reality (or rather, multiple realities), loneliness, the stifling pressures of a conformity-driven society, lust, hard liquor, conniving witches, lust, a dilapidated old antebellum mansion, lust, misfortune, existential ennui, lust, and did I mention lust yet?, etc. This time it's also got a sexy half-wit teenage girl (Carrol Baker) who got married off by her late daddy to local fallen captain of industry Archie Lee (Karl Malden), only there's a catch: they won't consummate the marriage until she turns 20. Well, the movie starts out the day before her 20th birthday, and a series of complications (mostly self-inflicted) conspire to prevent Archie from deflowering his lovely bride. I won't give away the story, but it's a very funny movie, not uproariously funny, but very sly and witty and absolutely drenched with sexual tension and non-stop sexual innuendo and imagery, some of it subtle but much of it pretty in-your-face... S&M, role playing, infantalism, oral sex, voyeurism are all suggested, pretty risqué for the a mainstream 50s picture. One thing, though: the girl looks and acts about 15, not 20-- I imagine the censors demanded they raise her age, but the filmmakers got away with implying the real story anyhow, at least more effectively than they implied Paul Newman's homosexuality in *Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" a couple years before. It's also got a rich subtext-- the deterioration of the southern Good Old Boys power structure, the rise of "outsiders" (foreigners, women) and corporate capitalism... There are countless great scenes where Archie is humiliated in front of his former black employees, all laughing hysterically at his stupidity and misfortunes, as well as a great scene where all the locals (put out of business by the new cotton mill) have a party and get drunk while the gin mill burns down.
The Glass Menagerie (1973)
a masterpiece
Deceptively simple, tragic four-character Tennessee Williams play set in St. Louis, with magnificent performances from Katherine Hepburn, Sam Waterston (yes, he did more than just Law & Order), Michael Moriarty (ill fated to later star in *Troll*, the worst film in history), and Johanna Miles (who deserves a greater reputation if only for this performance). Like a lot of his plays, happiness is just within reach but timing is just off enough to result in sorrow. Indeed, Waterston's character notes that "the greatest distance between any two points is time." If that were not enough, there's a million other great lines: "People go to the movies instead of moving"; "Science is supposed to solve all the mysteries of the universe only it seems like it just creates many more." Katherine also delivers a couple good lines about up-North Episcopalians being no good.
Revolutionary Road (2008)
more than just suburban angst
Most people hailed it as a masterpiece; the minority insisted it was pretentious and meaningless. Neither is the truth. That's part of what makes it interesting-- its ambiguity. Even though nut-case mathematician Michael Shannon bluntly shouts out many of the ostensible themes of the picture in an over-the-top scene, the thinking, open-minded viewer is left to guess, or decide whether the hellish marriage between thirty-something Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet is the result of our stifling, conformity driven capitalist culture (I think I already used that line, but it applies) and/OR the result of a neurotic, narcissistic housewife whose unfulfilled, grandiose dreams destroy the lives of those around her. There's no question about the overall quality of the production. I'd say its the story of two people just smart enough to see through the empty, soul-sucking aspects of modern life but lacking the imagination to transcend it. Which is, in itself, a very sad, sad story.
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)
excruciatingly boring
Tedious, mind-numbing one-hundred minute orgy of special effects and absolutely no wit or laughs. A literal cinematic meltdown. I can't adequately describe how bad this movie was, nor can I imagine who it would appeal to. If you're a parent considering taking your small children to it, save yourself the agony and hire a babysitter to go see it with them. It's that bad. Actually, I may be underestimating small children's intelligence, it's just that I'm not around that many. Nothing more than a paycheck for Ben Stiller can come from this picture, except (God help us) another sequel (if it makes enough money). I like Owen Wilson but he's literally squashed into playing a caricature of himself in the previous *Night at the Museum* film-- even someone with as his much personality could easily be replaced with CGI in this movie.
College Girls (1968)
Awful, but a tiny shade better than *Motel Confidential*
Companion piece to *Motel Confidential* on the newly released Johnny Legend's Sleazoid Classics Volume 5, *College Girls Confidential* is marginally better than its predecessor. At least this time, besides the endless female nudity, orgasms as fake as the lady's gigantic wigs, we are also treated to an inside look at the goings on at the Lambda Sigma Delta (LSD) fraternity house, including a psychedelic freak-out party with tripped-out coeds dancing naked and consuming lots of booze and controlled substances ("Happiness is a pill!") plus some deadeningly boring and endless boobies scenes, a college prof with oily slicked back hair ca-noodling various girls from his class, a giggly lesbian sex romp involving the prof's wife and a stoned-out-of-her-mind girl at the party, etc., etc., etc. You get the idea. Smutty, trashy, politically incorrect-- but unspeakably tedious and dumb. There was some potential for humor here, but the writer/director couldn't see past his close-ups of gyrating topless females to bother doing anything else with the material...
Motel Confidential (1969)
Semi-racy and unspeakably tedious!
No matter how much you might enjoy retro-trash movies, this sleaze-fest will disappoint you. Although it's completely crammed with nudity (primarily busty females and greasy hideous men) it's completely repetitive; within fifteen minutes you're starting to fall asleep, within half an hour, you're praying *somehow* it will actually develop something resembling a plot, and by the end you're just plain irritated at yourself for bothering to finish it at all! As I mentioned, there is NO plot, no nothing, just a sequence of endless vignettes of different couples checking in to the Quickie Motel (yes, that's the level of humor the film achieves), then undressing and flopping around gasping and moaning (the acting is so bad they can't even fake enjoying their sexual encounters), one couple after the next. The retro part consists of the female's monstrously huge *wigs*, several of which are at least 4' high... The duos include an 80-year old executive and his young biracial secretary, whose figure rivals Pam Grier's, but whose wig makes Grier's afro look like a crew cut... then a middle-aged suburban nymphomaniac who picks up a Sailor and forces him to repeatedly have sex until he's too exhausted to escape... then an old bag (Motel Manager says to Bellboy: "Just take this old bag to the room," in which she promptly exclaims "EXCUSE ME??!" to which he replies "Oh, I meant your suitcase") who dallys with Chi-Chi, the studly bellboy... then, a newly married couple who forgot to bring condoms and are thus delayed while the husband goes to buy some and then can't remember his way back to the motel... then a would-be swinging Casanova's who picks up a sexy lady and brings her back only to discover she's really a man ("She's a f*g in drag!")... then a slouchy housewife who beds down with a truck driver only to be interrupted by her husband, who it turns out is running a game on the other guy to get his money... then a couple intro some lightweight S&M (we have to watch the guy spanking his woman's bare buttocks close-up for at least twenty minutes... and about four other couples I can't remember. For an early soft-core sex flick, this movie makes sex seem absolutely the most tedious and boring thing on earth!!! (Probably *not* their intention.) There could've been humor, there could've been fun, but all we get is a series of, well, I've already gone on enough. This *might* have been shocking to moral majority folks in 1966, but if you're looking for titillation, go to your local zoo, or save yourself about an hour and twenty five minutes and just buy yourself a copy of Playboy, or whatever porno suits your pleasure. This is definitely *not* entertainment...