The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)
Megan Davis (Barbara Stanwyck) comes to Shanghai at the height of the Chinese Civil War to marry her childhood sweetheart, missionary Dr. Robert Strike. A powerful Chinese warlord, General Yen, assure them safe passage to perform humanitarian work.
At a checkpoint, they discover General Yen lied and, in the ensuing chaos, Robert and Megan are knocked unconscious and separated. When Megan awakes, she’s being held captive by General Yen. Through a series of contrived circumstances, Megan inexplicably develops feelings for her captor. When Yen is betrayed by his concubine, Megan comforts him and promises to stay with him, but the disgraced Yen commits suicide.
I’m a Barbara Stanwyck fan, put I prefer her in screwball comedies like The Lady Eve (1941), Meet John Doe (1941), or Ball of Fire (1941) or her deliciously evil role in the film noir classic, Double Indemnity (1944). Stanwyck is a lot of things, but a credible damsel in distress is not one of them.
This was the first film to play at Radio City Music Hall, but its controversial depiction of interracial romance led to a short eight-day run. The massive commercial failure caused Capra to focus on optimistic, crowd pleasing fare such as It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can’t Take it With You (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).
This is an okay melodrama, but it’s too contrived. The relationship between Megan and Yen feels like a gratuitous attempt to titillate.
Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me (2013)
After watching this documentary about the last years of Elaine Stritch’s life, it’s easy to see Jack Donaghy’s mother, Colleen, as an extension of her own personality.
This feisty, brutally honest woman is vain, demanding, mean, and maddeningly inconsistent. In one scene, she vows to stop drinking for health reasons, five scenes later she’s justifying why she deserves a drink.
Over eighty years old, she still gets nervous before a performance; rehearsals are often unpleasant and difficult.
Despite her numerous personal foibles, when she takes the stage, she’s electric, and, nearing the end of her life, still commands an audience.
In a world of ghost written Twitter accounts, Elaine Stritch represents a dying breed: a performer more concerned about her art than her image.
Gambit (2012)
Art curator Harry Deane (Colin Firth) stages an elaborate ruse to trick his demanding boss, Lord Shabandar (Alan Rickman), into buying a forgery of a famed Monet painting. He recruits a Texas rodeo queen, PJ Puznowski (Cameron Diaz) to aid in the deception.
Thanks to the surprisingly fresh chemistry between Firth and Diaz and solid supporting work from Rickman and Stanley Tucci, this movie made me chuckle more than I thought it would. Like a trashier version of The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), it’s a fun, caper film. In fact, I enjoyed this remake more than the original, despite my love of its stars Michael Caine and Shirley Maclaine.
The Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014)
When Bonanza was cancelled in 1973, accomplished TV actor Bing Russell (father of Kurt) pursued his lifelong dream of a baseball career by purchasing the Portland Mavericks, the last minor league team not affiliated with a major league club.
Bing instituted unorthodox practices to remain competitive such as inviting every rejected or washed up major leaguer (including infamous Yankee Jim Bouton) to try out for his team.
For a four-year period, the team was a Pacific Northwest phenomenon, smashing attendance records and almost winning the championship, but, threatened by Bing’s success, Major League Baseball used archaic rules to force him to sell the club.
This is a fun, enthusiastic film about pursuing your passion in spite of incredible odds.
Homefront (2013)
Former DEA agent Phil Broker (Jason Statham) moves with his daughter to the hometown of his deceased wife. When his daughter gets into a fight at school, the child’s mother, Cassie (Kate Bosworth) convinces her drug dealing brother Gator (James Franco) to extract revenge on Broker’s family.
Written by Sylvester Stallone, the screenplay is a soulless exercise in derivative action films. With no emotional stake in the film, I didn’t care what happened to Phil Broker or his family.
Jason Statham is a good action star, in the tradition of Jean Claude van Dame or Steven Segal, but lacks the charisma of more mainstream stars like Bruce Willis or The Rock.
Kate Bosworth has been given every opportunity to prove she should be considered a big name actress, but at this point in her career, she’s best suited for smaller supporting roles like Cassie.
James Franco is miscast as Gator. This is the type of movie he and his stoner friends would watch ironically, and his performance reinforces the idea he sees this movie as a joke.
Winona Ryder is better than I anticipated as Sheryl Marie Mott but this is not a good fit. She needs to be in quirky independent films or period dramas, not action movies about meth dealers.
This throwback movie is an attempt to revitalize the genre Stallone excelled at in the mid 1980s. You get the sense he wrote this thirty years ago and has been trying to get it made since, sadly he waited too long.
Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)
In the mid 1930s, Celestine works as a maid at a country chateau where everyone is obsessed with sex: the owner is a serial philanderer, his wife suffers from dyspareunia; the wife’s father has a fetish for women in boots.
When a local girl is sexual assaulted and murdered, Celestine suspects her fellow servant Joseph. She seduces him, hoping to persuade him to admit his guilt. When this fails, she frames him for the murder, but his arrest is short-lived due to “insufficient evidence,” which Celestine suspects is because of his right-wing political connections. Frustrated, Celestine marries and leaves. The film ends with a right wing rally in Cherbourg.
Luis Buñel’s earlier films, including his famed collaboration with Salvdaor Dali, were surrealist experiments, but from this point forward, his films were focused on the intersection of sexuality and politics. Unfortunately, interesting subjects don’t guarantee interesting films.