Pancho is portrayed in the film as a lovable bandit. He steals from people, raises hell and kills anybody who gets in his way, but it’s all played up like a Disney film with cheerful music and patriotic themes. It’s a little uncomfortable to watch and think that Mexico would be perfectly fine with them being portrayed as having followed such a terrible person in such a light manner. But once you strip away the Realist mindset, I have to admit that Beery’s portrayal of Pancho is kind of charming. They make him seem like a really lovable guy who only wanted what was best for his people, but that he just had really rough ways of going about getting that peace. They only sort of go into the morality of what he’s doing and spend most of the time glorifying him as a hero no matter how he led his armies.I can understand this kind of movie being made, and it is a fun movie to watch, but it’s almost like if they were to make a musical based on the life of Andrew Jackson (oh wait, that did happen). I understand that it was a revolution and as such it sort of necessarily had to get bloody in order to fight against the resisting military force in charge, but they make a point in the film that what Pancho is doing is wrong while at the same time trying to get the audience to root for him while he does it. The messages just feel a little mixed and awkward to me.

But again, the movie is enjoyable for Beery’s performance alone. In his private life, they portray Pancho as a caring man who really does care for his friends, and these scenes are where the film really shines. He’s kind to his men, kinder to his friends, and really admires the leader of the revolution, Francisco Madero (Henry B. Walthall). After Madero’s assassination (it’s not really a spoiler if it happened in real life), you understand and feel Pancho’s pain and loss, and it does make sense that he would do what he ends up doing. As a character, Pancho is thoroughly entertaining to watch. As a person in real life, well, I’d have to read up more on him to understand who we’re truly dealing with.

And that being said, they make a point in the opening credits that this film is “fictional,” despite being based on true events, so I don’t know how much of it is real and how much they made up or was brought about by legend. I do know however that Viva Villa! is an okay movie with an entertaining protagonist, even if it does feel like a glorification of someone who ought not to be glorified, at times.

Final Verdict:

Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), Howard (Walter Huston) and Curtin (Tim Holt) are three down-and-out men looking for a profit when they decide to go looking for gold. The three of them set out into the mountains of Mexico to find their fortunes, but along the way they have to deal with bandits, tag-alongs, wild beasts and worst of all: Their own greed.

I don’t believe I’ve actually seen a whole lot of Humphrey Bogart films in my time but this is certainly a change of pace from something like Casablanca. Dobbs is a corrupt, weak, devious man who is most easily tempted by the harsh wilderness and high stakes at hand while panning for gold. He gives a performance that I would call "outstanding" if he wasn’t up against two actors who I’d give the same label to. Huston sadly passed only a short while after making this film, but it was a great mark to be made so late in his life. And Holt is great as the much more level headed of the two younger miners. I thought it was great watching Dobbs and Curtin go at each other, with Dobbs constantly worrying about his share of the loot and Curtin being more sensible and trusting of the others. Meanwhile Howard is just an old man out for some fun, not caring if he gets even an ounce of gold in the end.

It’s interesting getting into the minds of three very different people and how they handle their situation. At first I was wondering if it would just end up with all three of the characters fighting over their shares, with a message about how greed is bad. But the message is more about how greed can take ahold of somebody and push them to limits that others would never dare to go. Dodd starts to really break down as the story goes along, and it’s nice to see Curtin along with him contrasting this rather than giving in to it himself. Add to this some rather intense moments with the bandits and some decent gunplay and you have a pretty solid flick.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is easily one of the best movies I have ever seen. It’s a must for just about anyone, although I can’t imagine any woman I know sitting through it. It’s worth a watch if only for Bogart’s performance, or to finally hear how that “We don’t need no stinking badges” line actually plays out in the movie. The payoff for that line is so much better than I was expecting.

Final Verdict: 

It’s been a few years since he lost the big championship fight, but The Champ (Wallace Beery) and his son Dink (Jackie Cooper) are doing their best to struggle through life. But when Dink’s mother discovers the two of them pretty much slumming it, she tries to reason with The Champ and give Dink a better home. And while he protests at first, The Champ starts to realize that his problems with alcohol and gambling could be good enough reason to give up his boy to a good home.

Not including the Superman movies of course, this is my first encounter with little Jackie Cooper, and he has to be the greatest child actor I’ve ever seen. He’s incredibly charming but he’s also able to nail the more emotional scenes perfectly. And he has plenty of those to show off his talents here. It’s made even better when he has a talent like Beery to play off. The father/son relationship between the two is great to watch, with Dink standing by his father even when he’s at his lowest and his father trying his hardest to be a good father.

While it did sort of bother me while watching it, the message of the son always going back to his dead-beat dad who isn’t taking well enough care of him, the message of family is much stronger and ultimately overrules any possibly questionable morality or judgement from the characters. On a technical side, however, I can fault the movie in that it used a lot of really lame tricks like speeding up the film during some scenes, making for awkward action like during a boxing match and a horse race. I mean, these were normal practices for the time but I never really understood it. It just makes things look weird and unnatural and really takes you out of the movie for a bit. The boxing match at the end is especially harmed by this in that it takes away a lot of the tension in the action. That being said though, the ending is still really great, with things turning out about the way you would expect them to, in a good way.

The Champ is a movie with a dime-a-dozen story that’s made exponentially better by the two leads, Beery and Cooper. Their interactions are what make the movie, and they’re both worth the price of admission, as it were.
Final Verdict:  ]]> http://www.sploich.com/reviews/champ1931/feed/ 0 http://www.sploich.com/reviews/phila1940/ http://www.sploich.com/reviews/phila1940/#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:00:48 +0000 Sploich http://www.sploich.com/?p=398

Two years after a messy divorce, Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) finds herself marrying the newly wealthy and famous George Kittredge (John Howard). But as the wedding is about to go off, her old husband C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) brings in reporters Macaulay "Mike" Connor (Jimmy Stewart) and Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) to write on the new couple’s private life as a way to get himself back into Tracy’s life. What’s more is that Tracy finds herself that night being more friendly than she should with Mike.

Katharine Hepburn is just incredible in this film. Tracy is a very confused character who doesn’t quite understand what she wants out of life. She thinks she should be treated like a goddess but she’s not entirely sure she deserves it, and she seems to feel that settling with George is going to be what she needs in order to figure things out. It’s great watching her interact with all three of these men who all love her but for completely different reasons, and watching them interact with her for that matter. Really, the acting all around is great, but it is Hepburn’s movie and she shines brighter than the rest with her brilliant performance.

But the performances would mean nothing without the great screenplay Donald Ogden Stewart. The dialogue is quick and witty, formulating each character through every word. The love square, or whatever you want to call it, makes for a highly amusing premise and the payoff is charmingly unique.

The Philadelphia Story is great fun with a great cast, a great script and, well, it’s just all around great. If you get the chance to see this one, take that chance.

Final Verdict: 

Dr. Robert Richardson (Lew Ayres) has just recently taken over for a doctor in a small town in Nova Scotia when he meets a young deaf woman named Belinda (Jane Wyman). He bring it upon himself to teach her how to communicate with people, but when the girl is one night attacked by a man and later turns out to be pregnant, the townsfolk begin to think the doctor is taking advantage of the handicapped girl.

Jane Wyman is fantastic in this movie. She plays Belinda as an intelligent young woman whose only problem is that she can’t hear. She never has a single line in the entire film but she’s still able to bring forth a ton of emotions. You can tell that things are harder for her but she’s a strong enough character to push through, even after really terrible things start happening to her. I like that even before the doctor begins teaching her, her father has developed his own way for her to as least get chores done around the farm. They do a great job developing the relationship between Belinda and her father, although something happens later in the film that undermines that a bit.

Stephen McNally plays Locky McCormick, the man who attacks Belinda, and while he’s not exactly a developed villain, he serves his purpose extremely well. From the moment this guy first showed up on screen I began despising him. He’s such a sleazy, evil jerk, and the things he does in this movie are just despicable. Unfortunately the payoff in the end isn’t as satisfying as I was hoping, but there is a payoff that could have been made better. The thing is, there’s one thing he does that it is absolutely inexcusable, but I feel like he just sort of got away with it in the end and it’s still bugging me.

If you’ve seen Johnny Belinda, I’d be curious to know what you think of this, but near the end of the movie I started thinking that I really want to see this remade by somebody like the Coen Brothers. I know it’s not exactly their normal type of film but there are a lot of things about it that I’d love to see them do in their own way. This movie itself though is really great and I highly recommend it.

Final Verdict: 

It begins with a mission: A group of six Nazi soldiers land on the shores of Nova Scotia as scouts before bringing in the whole army to attack over the Canadian/American border. But Canada spots the submarine and takes it out, leaving the six soldiers to continue on alone. We follow the group as they head down to the border through a series of different settings, all unwelcome to the Nazi intruders and all ready and rearing to stop the force from the Third Reich.

The story leads us along with the German soldiers as they encounter all sorts of people living in Canada, free from oppression and proud of that fact. As they go along, still trying to succeed in their mission, each of them is lost along the way one-by-one, in one way or another. Ultimately, the message is not only one of empowerment to the people fighting against the Nazi regime. It also shows the drastic differences between our ways of thinking, the differences between Socialism and Democracy, and explains in a very profound way exactly why the German way of doing things at the time was ultimately going to fail. The movie is a really fascinating bit of propaganda, and an effective one at that.

I think the most interesting thing about it is that it doesn’t hold back at all. There are some really brutal, uncomfortable scenes in this movie, ever building your hatred for the monstrous antagonists at hand. What’s really great is that it doesn’t just blindly say "Nazis bad, Canadians good," it really does explain not only how much better the Western way of life is but how much better life was in Germany before things turned sour. In other words, it doesn’t portray Germans as the enemies; it portrays bullies as the enemies, or "gangsters" as they call them throughout the movie.

This was emphasized to great effect in a portion where the troops fall into a commune made up of German immigrants living under a Democratic system. The Nazis are confused by ideas such as people choosing their own jobs and spending their own money. Specifically within this section, there are two contrasting speeches back-to-back in which the Nazi leader Bernsdorff (Richard George) tries to recruit the commune to help him and they return with an enthusiastic "Yeah, that’s not gonna happen."

49th Parallel is not unlike many films of its time in its message, but seeing that message being constantly bludgeoned over the heads of the Nazi soldiers and then seeing the Nazis still be completely reluctant to it makes the payoff throughout the film all the more satisfying.

Final Verdict: 

I feel like I’ve seen a ton of these "slice of life" 19th century nostalgia films. Old Yeller had a very similar feeling to it. I don’t know what really started these but I wouldn’t doubt The Yearling being a major contributor to their popularity.

The movie is about a boy named Jody (Claude Jarman Jr.) working a small family acre in the Florida backwoods. His father Penny (Gregory Peck) is trying his hardest to raise his son right, teaching him lessons about life while still allowing him to enjoy childhood. His mother, Orry (Jane Wyman), on the other hand, is a distant, almost cold woman who feels that life has treated her so poorly that any sort of happiness or attachment to others can only lead to tragedy. After a life-threatening accident ends up killing a doe, Jody decides to take the doe’s faun in as his own and raise it. But as times become tougher and the faun becomes more of a hassle to keep, Jody does a lot of growing up in a very short amount of time.

I always find it amusing how stories like this will just throw stuff at you out of nowhere. It’s got a simple story, but the road to get to that story is littered with characters and plot lines that either go no where, come from nowhere, or ultimately serve no purpose to the story. But in the end, at least in this film, most all of it does add up to a common goal of having Jody become a young adult. He has to deal with death and tragedy, and it’s great to watch not only Jody but the rest of his family learn and grow from these events as well.

The film flourishes its visuals with brilliant cinematography throughout. There’s an extended scene around the middle of the film of Jody playing with his faun that felt like the director just telling the cinematographer to go wild, and while the payoff ultimately serves little purpose, it’s beautiful to watch. And while this is sort of hindered by the fact that some of the smaller scenes are obviously shot on a set, the sets aren’t bad. The lighting and effects such as wind are used well, but that sort of filmmaking has never aged as well as on-location shoots.

The Yearling is a movie I would want my kids to see. Old Yeller has overshadowed it over time due to home video sales and the fact that it’s from Disney, but The Yearling is a superior version of a very similar story. Needless to say, I recommend it.

Final Verdict: 

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a daring film that tells a story so personal to a lot of people that they may refuse to like it just on this basis. But for those who can get past the controversial subject at hand, this can be a thoroughly entertaining, heartfelt work of art.

Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) is an awkward child whose father Thomas (Tom Hanks) has just died in the September 11 attacks. His father always liked to plan out games for his son in order to teach him how to appreciate his life more, and after his death Oskar believes his father has set out one last adventure for him. With the help of an elderly man (Max von Sydow), he goes forth into New York City to find what can be unlocked by a mysterious key.

I think we are to a point now where movies about September 11 are easier to swallow. The thing is that you have to be respectable and not use it as some sort of gimmick to force emotion in your movie *cough* Remember Me *cough*. This is one of those movies that not only uses it respectably but uses it in a very human way. It’s not a story about September 11 but rather a story about a young boy dealing with the loss of his father. The way he goes about this brings him to new places and allows him to meet new people, all of whom were affected by the towers coming down. And it’s just a really great story about this bizarre child having to deal with all of his problems and feeling as if there’s nobody in the world who can possibly help him.

Thomas Horn is a phenomenal young actor who definitely has a big career ahead of him. I’d love to see him in something much more lighthearted to see just how good he really is, but for this movie he was perfect. He delivers his lines in an inhuman manner that suits his character well, but when he does begin to act human you can really feel that vulnerability. He plays brilliantly off of Sandra Bullock, who plays Oskar’s mother Linda. The two have multiple touching scenes with some really great, memorable moments throughout. Max von Sydow isn’t given a whole lot to do, but he makes his character likable and understandable, even without saying a single word throughout the film. And then of course there’s Tom Hanks, who gets the least amount of screen time and yet gives probably one of the best performances of his life. When you learn more about those final moments in his character’s life, you begin to miss him just as much as the characters do. The film creates a realistic emotional bond between the characters that works great.

I’m not exactly sure how wide of a release this is getting, but it’s one that you should definitely see the moment you can. I can totally understand if this is still too strong an issue to deal with in a film for you, but if it’s not then I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Final Verdict: 

Who knew all this time that despite there being no breathable air on the surface of Mars, an entire race of creatures could populate the planet and just live underneath it, where there’s plenty of oxygen? While it has a lot of scientific perplexities such as this, Mars Needs Moms is still an enjoyable, heart-warming movie with a great message. Although, it could have been done much better.

A young boy named Milo (Seth Green, Seth Robert Dusky) becomes a stow-away on a rocket bound for Mars. Martians have kidnapped his mother (Joan Cusack) in order to use her powers of discipline and order to program “nannybots” to take care of their children. It’s up to Milo and a hidden resistance including a human named Gribble (Dan Fogler) and a martian named Ki (Elisabeth Harnois) to save his mother and bring enlightenment to the alien race.

The very first thing I noticed about this movie is that the animation just was not up to par with what people have been doing in motion capture. It felt like something made as a test while leading up to The Polar Express, though the scale of the settings were impressively larger than expected. The film is never a pretty film to look at, with its grotesque alien lifeforms and its far-from-natural-looking humans. There’s some very heavy-handed and ultimately useless symbolism centering on the fact that the color scheme for most of the movie is browns, grays, and the like. This mixed with the subpar animation makes it a little unsettling to sit through at times.

But what surprised me the most is how as things progressed, I went from not really liking a lot of the characters to really falling in love with some of them. Milo starts out as an annoying little brat, but he’s never over-the-top as far as movie kids go. He’s just a kid and once he understands the drastic responsibility he has to take on, he begins to man up in a natural way. Gribble is introduced as an annoying slob who constantly utters nonsensical references to 80′s movies and television, but over time he does this less and as you learn about his character you begin to sympathize with him a lot more. The only character who isn’t developed at all is Ki, who is basically Gribble only with 70′s references, so more like a Hippie than an 80′s kid. She continues to act this way throughout the film and never gains any sort of characteristics other than that. The villain, the Supervisor (Mindy Sterling) never feels like a huge threat and is incredibly wooden, so she’s barely even worth mentioning other than to point out that the villain sucks.

I wish I could say a lot more about Mars Needs Moms but I don’t really want to spoil anything because I do recommend it. I think the ending could have been altered slightly and become a much more fascinating story, but I do like the way things work out in the end. But other than the sporadic, unnecessary, dated references (which are never really overbearing), the story gets pretty emotional and brings a third act worth the price of admission.

Final Verdict: 

This isn’t exactly what I was planning to watch tonight, but while watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic on The Hub, I’ve been having to sit through countless episodes of Strawberry Shortcake’s Berry Bitty Adventures. It’s not a good show, in the sense that I feel like it really talks down to its audience sometimes. But I’ve never been able to bring myself to hate it or even actively dislike it. Anyway, I was bored and browsing Netflix and decided to watch the movie that essentially acted as a pilot for the show to see if it was of equal, greater or lesser quality. And honestly, it evens out pretty well.

Strawberry Shortcake (Anna Cummer) is a tiny humanoid creature who lives among flowers in Berry Bitty City with her friends Lemon (Andrea Libman), Plum (Ashleigh Ball), Orange (Janyse Jaud), Blueberry (Britt McKillip) and Raspberry (Ingrid Nilson), as well as the Berrykins and a caterpillar named Mr. Longface. After a giant boulder falls onto their town’s water supply, the girls set out with Mr. Longface to find a special rock that can bring back their water via magic.

I know that explanation of the show certainly doesn’t sell it but it’s a very colorful, lighthearted show with some nice music (although the lyrics to the songs are awful, all of them). I like the characters and how not only do each of them have their own personalities, but they’re at least somewhat multidimensional and, even more important, they each have jobs and responsibilities instead of just existing as simple tropes for the little girls watching to mindlessly enjoy. I like that the show actually teaches work ethic and allows its characters to be role models.

But I’m supposed to be talking about the movie, which is supposed to, I would assume, establish the characters, who they are, what they do, and the like. But the movie really doesn’t do any of this. All I know about the characters I know from the show, and if I had watched the movie first I probably wouldn’t have a clue who these characters were and probably wouldn’t have been able to tolerated it. On one hand I can understand writing it like this, where you could watch it in any order with the show and it would feel like just another episode, only longer. On the other hand it does sort of work against everything I just praised the show for.

For the most part the movie is just like a long episode, only it was made well over a year before the show came about and it shows in the animation. The show was a serious upgrade in terms of animation quality, with characters in the movie having much more stilted movements and less animated hair. But where it really feels too much like the show is in how it gets to its story. Mr. Longface makes up a lie about a magic rock after their water supply goes away, and that leads to the entire story arc that takes place most of the movie. Once he finally confesses, not only does it make the journey feel like a complete waste of time (it wasn’t technically, but it FEELS like it) but it makes Mr. Longface look like a terrible "person" for having made them go through all that. They eventually accept his apology but they were completely justified in not doing so. He very nearly ruins the lives of these girls all because of these stories he’s been making up. It just put a bad taste in my mouth.

I am pretty much completely apathetic toward this movie. If your kid wants to watch it, or even if I had a kid and she wanted to watch it, I would let her without question. But it’s something that is made strictly for its target audience. Then again, I doubt anybody outside of that target would go out of their way to watch it anyway.

Final Verdict: