Joseph Mankiewicz accepts all the Broadway Backstage stereotypes and hones them into a like-new sharpness, a little dulled again before movie's end. Bette Davis is the insecure star and Anne Baxter the ambitious ingénue climbing up her back. Gary Merrill, Davis's real-life husband, plays her husband, and George Sanders and …
Prototypical caper film, rather hurried into the heist itself, and plodding through the calamitous aftermath. John Huston's direction is mildly overemphatic and strongly oversentimentalized. But the bare bones (W.R. Burnett novel) are solid enough. Sterling Hayden, Sam Jaffe, Jean Hagen, Louis Calhern, Marilyn Monroe.
Trick photography. First, because it's the story of a man who photographed his tricks: Bert Stern, lenser, lover, lothario. The man is undeniably gifted, and apparently, undeniable in other ways as well — even in his eighties, he casts a spell over a trio of sweetish, youngish things (two of …
An early novel by Arthur Miller becomes an outmoded message movie, set back in the Second World War to excuse its squareness, dealing with a middle-aged Presbyterian whose new spectacles make him "look Jewish." For some unapparent reason, his even newer blonde-bombshell wife (Laura Dern, a Marilyn Monroe figure, if …
A fanciful Meeting-of-the-Minds in a Manhattan hotel room in the mid-Fifties between (not all at once) Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and Joe McCarthy, identified in the script as just the Professor, the Actress, the Ballplayer, and the Senator. The promise of philosophical fireworks is largely unfulfilled, although the …
Mark Herman's transplant to the screen, minus the first five words of the original title (The Rise and Fall of...), of Jim Cartwright's London stage piece, conceived as a showcase for the unsuspected talents of Jane Horrocks. Some of her abundant talents had of course been well known, from Mike …
Streetwalker's fairy tale, down a somewhat different street from that of Pretty Woman, a quiet suburban one, into a ready-made family composed of an ecologically conscious widower and his prepubescent son. Grace Kelly is the working girl's avowed ideal ("She married a prince, and never grew old"), but seeing as …
John Huston’s modern dress western was a troubled shoot, best remembered for ringing down the curtain on Hollywood’s reigning King and Queen, Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Knowing what we do going in can’t help but contribute to the film’s prevailing status as consummate downer. MM stars as the disillusioned …
The screenplay about contemporary cowboys and the sad-faced divorcée who keeps their company is Arthur Miller's, with all the pretentiousness, the stiltedness, and the verboseness expected of him. The direction is by John Huston, and mostly flat, or at least flat-footed, until brought to life during the climactic roundup of …
Howard Hawks's slapstick treatment of the Jekyll-and-Hyde mad scientist, in particular Rouben Mamoulian's reverse-evolutionary version of him in 1932, where Hyde was explicitly linked to the apes. Here an elixir of youth -- perfected by a laboratory chimp! -- transports its imbibers back to adolescence and all the way to …
A gossipy peekaboo based on Colin Clark’s memoir as an assistant on the English set of 1957’s The Prince and the Showgirl. He has a crush on Marilyn Monroe, who reciprocates voluptuously (this may be mostly imagined), while costar and director Laurence Olivier fumes. Eddie Redmayne is appealing as coltish …
Infidelity and foul play amid the postcard attractions of Honeymoon Heaven, U.S.A. The tabloid sensationalism centers around a Korean Conflict veteran (Joseph Cotten, a real sourpuss), who suffers from postwar depression, and his restless wife (Marilyn Monroe in her early, slutty period). On the sidelines, a jolly Shredded Wheat salesman …
Unworthy biopic on "the pin-up queen of the universe," a brief reign in the mid-Fifties, until a congressional hearing on pornography sent her down the path of repentance, into the sheltering arms of Jesus. Gretchen Mol is game enough in the posing sessions, and has her own kind of vulnerability …
Sexy neighbor Marilyn Monroe fuels the extramarital fantasy of a New Yorker left to swelter while his family goes to the summer house. Directed by Billy WIlder.
In the later stage of Billy Wilder’s career, there is an evident pull toward the romantic and euphoric (Love in the Afternoon, Irma La Douce, Avanti), and there is an opposing pull toward the caustic and raucous (One Two Three, The Fortune Cookie, the Ray Walston-Cliff Osmond bits, particularly, in …