she can't help it she's plain ignorant

SPOILER ALERT: Don't read the second or third reviews if you're intent on watching the movie for the first time. 

Average rating: 7. 

 

Gaslight (1944) - "After the death of her famous opera-singing aunt, Paula is sent to study in Italy to become a great opera singer as well. While there, she falls in love with the charming Gregory Anton. The two return to London, and Paula begins to notice strange goings-on: missing pictures, strange footsteps in the night and gaslights that dim without being touched. As she fights to retain her sanity, her new husband's intentions come into question."

length: 1 hour, 54 minutes

source: I borrowed the DVD from my parents' collection
I watched it because: I'd seen it before but it's been a while, and it's a good one

    (previously reviewed here)
IMDB: 7.8/10  -  Rotten Tomatoes: Tomatometer: 89% Audience: 90%
my IMDB: 8/10

AFI: 100 Years…100 Thrills (2001) #78

MPAA rating: Approved

notable quote: "'You see how it is, Elizabeth.'

    'I see just how it is, sir.'"

directed by: George Cukor

my notes: intense, distressing, and very well done. Cukor's direction, along with Joseph Ruttenberg's cinematography, makes it so chilling. The acting, too, is well renowned. Joseph Cotton, in particular, is terrific.

Academy Award winner:
• Best Actress—Ingrid Bergman

• Best Art Direction - Interior Decoration, Black and white—Cedric Gibbons, William Ferrari, Edwin B. Willis, Paul Huldschinsky
Academy Award nominee:
• Best Picture

• Best Actor—Charles Boyer

• Best Supporting Actress—Angela Landsbury

• Best Writing, Screenplay—John L. Balderston, Walter Reisch, John Van Druten

• Best Cinematography, Black and white—Ruttenberg
overall: highly recommended

 

Viva Las Vegas (1964) - "All musically gifted race-driver Lucky Jackson (Elvis Presley) wants in Las Vegas is to score enough money for a new car motor so he can win the Grand Prix. When he encounters sexy swimming instructor Rusty (Ann-Margret), he considers staying around longer. After Lucky loses his winnings in the hotel pool, he's forced to remain in Vegas long enough to win back his dough—but now he also wants to win the Rusty's heart. Unfortunately, so does his slick racing enemy, Elmo (Cesare Danova)."
length: 1 hour, 25 minutes

source: streamed on Tubi
I watched it because: I wanted something short and light, after the above
IMDB: 6.4/10  -  Rotten Tomatoes: Tomatometer: 86% Audience: 67%
my IMDB: 4/10

MPAA rating: Approved

notable quote: "Unfortunately you are on your way to Los Angeles and I have to work on my car, therefore we have no time for a beautiful girl."

directed by: George Sidney

my notes: Through the first 75% of the film, I was mildly amused and even charmed. Ann-Margret is wonderful, and I quite liked Danova's "racing count" persona. It all hit a wall (pun intended) when Elmo became skeezy and awful (he was twice her age, after all), Lucky revealed his inner misogynist asshole, and Rusty lost her backbone in favor of cooking and being stupid about machines. Give me a f'ing break. Ugh.

    The four stars are for some good singing ("The Lady Loves Me", below, is the best scene in the film) and excellent (if frenetic and outdated) dancing.

overall: not really recommended

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) - "When Joanna Drayton (Katharine Houghton), a free-thinking white woman, and black doctor John Prentice (Sidney Poitier) become engaged, they travel to San Francisco to meet her parents. Matt Drayton (Spencer Tracy) and his wife Christina (Katharine Hepburn) are wealthy liberals who must confront the latent racism the coming marriage arouses. Also attending the Draytons' dinner are Prentice's parents (Roy E. Glenn Sr., Beah Richards), who vehemently disapprove of the relationship."
length: 1 hour, 48 minutes

source: I borrowed the DVD from my parents' collection
I watched it because: it knocked me on my butt when I saw it the first time (mentioned here) and again a few years later—and I think it's going to be one of those movies I need to see at least that often, always.
IMDB: 7.8/10  -  Rotten Tomatoes: Tomatometer: 71% Audience: 85%
my IMDB: 9/10

AFI: 100 Years…100 Movies (original list 1998) #99

    100 Years…100 Passions (2002) #58

    100 Years…100 Cheers (2006) #35

MPAA rating: Approved

notable quote:  

Now, Mr. Prentice—clearly a most reasonable man—says he has no wish to offend me, but wants to know if I'm some kind of a nut. And Mrs. Prentice says that—like her husband—I'm a burned-out old shell of a man who cannot even remember what it's like to love a woman the way her son loves my daughter. And, strange as it seems, that's the first statement made to me all day with which I am prepared to take issue . . . 'cause I think you're wrong. You're as wrong as you can be. I admit that I hadn't considered it, hadn't even thought about it, but I know exactly how he feels about her, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that your son feels for my daughter that I didn't feel for Christina. Old? Yes. Burned-out? Certainly. But I can tell you, the memories are still there: clear, intact, indestructible, and they'll be there if I live to be 110. Where John made his mistake, I think, was in attaching so much importance to what her mother and I might think . . . because in the final analysis, it doesn't matter a damn what we think. The only thing that matters is what they feel, and how much they feel, for each other. And if it's half of what we felt, that's everything.

As for you two, and the problems you're going to have, they seem almost unimaginable—but you'll have no problem with me, and I think when Christina and I and your mother have some time to work on him, you'll have no problem with your father, John. But you do know, I'm sure you know, what you're up against. There'll be a hundred million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled, and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives. You could try to ignore those people, or you could feel sorry for them and for their prejudice and their bigotry and their blind hatred and stupid fears, but where necessary you'll just have to cling tight to each other and say "screw all those people!" Anybody could make a case, a hell of a good case, against your getting married. The arguments are so obvious that nobody has to make them. But you're two wonderful people who happened to fall in love and happened to have a pigmentation problem, and I think that now, no matter what kind of a case some bastard could make against your getting married, there would be only one thing worse, and that would be if—knowing what you two are, and knowing what you two have, and knowing what you two feel—you didn't get married.

directed by: Stanley Kramer

my notes: a marvelous film. Scandalous in its day (or at least boundary-pushing), it still seems brave and profound almost 60 years later. I enjoyed every cast member, though some parts were less substantial and developed than others. (Tillie Binks, Mr. Prentice, and, sadly, Joanna Drayton were all one-dimensional roles.) 

    Poitier is terrific, nuanced and real, with the love for and of a woman and the sometimes-contradictory feelings of an adult child and the self-assuredness of a talented professional playing out beneath the racial stubbornness and fear of the American 1960s.  

    Cecil Kellaway is wonderful as the Monsignor Mike Ryan, providing both comic relief and a warm, open heart filled with love for these people.

    Katharine Hepburn is dignified, smart, and bursting with love for her daughter and her friend Mike, and most of all for her crotchety, troubled husband.

    Spencer Tracy, though.... I think this is the best performance of his career. It is clear that Mike's reluctance to give approval for the marriage is not about racism or superior dislike; it's about overwhelming love for his daughter Joanna, respect for John, and terrible fear that he can't keep them safe and happy. His soliloquy might be in the words of Matt Drayton, but the feeling is all Tracy, speaking of his love for and life with Hepburn. Seeing her tears throughout, knowing that Tracy would not live to see the film released, is heart-breaking. I sobbed through the last half hour and a while beyond. 

    My only caveat, and the reason it's not a 10/10, is the cloying and intrusive score. The theme song is over-repeated and clonked on top of what could have been introspective moments. Roger Ebert agreed with me on that; his lovely review is here.

Academy Award winner:
• Best Actress—Hepburn

• Best Writing, Story and screenplay - Written directly for the screen—William Rose
Academy Award nominee:
• Best Picture—Kramer

• Best Actor—Tracy (posthumously)

• Best Supporting Actor—Kellaway

• Best Supporting Actress—Beah Richards

• Best Director—Kramer

• Best Art Direction - Set Decoration—Robert Clatworthy, Frank Tuttle

• Best Film Editing—Robert C. Jones

• Best Music, Scoring of music, adaptation or treatment—Frank De Vol
overall:  strongly recommended

[the title quotation is from Viva Las Vegas]