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Reviews
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)
A pleasant romp--better than the first one!
I loved this one. Maybe it was because I wasn't expecting great cinema or art, but each joke hit my funny bone, and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It's one of those where the laughs come so fast that you miss a couple of jokes just from enjoying the first one. Ben Stiller is good, and the humor is physical and cerebral. Amy Adams is perfect as Amelia Earhart, and her dialect and jargon are spot on. Hank Azaria is a hoot, and his persona is fun to watch. A male Egyptian wicked witch of the west, if you can imagine that. The actor who played Napoleon was also a lot of fun. The Washington DC locations were great and the friends from the last film had great interplay. The fact that my favorite president makes an appearance was gravy! Not sure why others didn't like this one, but for me it was a winner. Sharp, fun and a good way to lighten an afternoon or evening.
The Bing Crosby Show (1964)
It's still Bing...
Objectively, everything that the other reviewers have said is true, but it's still Bing. I love seeing him in previously undiscovered settings, and this is one of them.
If you can get a hold of these episodes, they are fun to watch. Beverly Garland was a good match for Bing, before she became the step-mom on "My Three Sons."
The stories do all wrap up nicely in the time of the episode, but that's how TV worked back then. It's nice to see guest stars appearing on the show. All in all, I can think of worse ways to spend your time!
Now if any of you have a source for the old "Hollywood Palace" shows, that would be the best compliment to this show.
Possessed (1947)
An acting tour de force for Crawford, with just a few plot holes
The acting was good all around, especially Joan's, and my only gripes with the film are how the plot was resolved and the idiotic explanation of mental illness. MAJOR SPOILERS follow, so if you don't want to know what happened in the movie, don't read on!
Joan Crawford's body language at the beginning is excellent, she moves forward as if sleepwalking, yet not as a robot. Her steps show an abandon and lack of balance as well, which one learns is a reflection of her mental state. At this moment, I wondered why they called the movie "Possessed", and only later understood when the doctor explained it, but her gestures did seem like those of a woman possessed by fear and in a cloud of confusion.
Another thing I found myself wondering about was why they did her makeup the way they did at the beginning of the film. When dressed as a nurse (in flashback), Louise's coloring looked normal, but when dressed in the dark dress that she was found in (in the present) or in the cream colored clothing at the hospital, she looked unnaturally tan or flushed, even in black and white. By the end of the movie, once we'd gotten through the flashbacks, her coloring no longer looked this way. Bad camera work or lighting, perhaps?
Van Heflin was also excellent, though I imagine that his style of acting could make others cringe. I do wish they hadn't included the obligatory drinking scenes. As the adored David, he did his usual competent job. I enjoyed his sardonic delivery and the fact that he got the wittiest lines in most scenes, such as when he told Graham's young son, "The last time I saw you, you weren't even shaving yet."
Joan's mental deterioration is masterfully done and is the main reason for seeing this movie. In the beginning, Louise says that before she'd fallen in love with David, she'd never felt anything for anyone before, she'd kind of gone through life sleepwalking. The cracks in her armor become ever more evident as the events unfold in flashback. At moments, she seemed so psychotic that she was ready to break. Had I been Mr. Graham, played acceptably well by Raymond Massey, I would have backed up very quickly when she greeted my proposal of marriage with maniacal laughter. He didn't notice how dangerous she could be and how fragile her hold on reality actually was. The fact that no one noticed her mood swings and inconsistencies was a bit odd. Perhaps after what they'd all been through with the first Mrs. Graham's long illness and irrational accusations, Louise's quirks weren't as noticeable. Perhaps Graham's own pathology was that he was attracted to mentally deficient women.
At first I was bothered by what I thought were holes in the plot. For example, I found myself wondering why Van Heflin didn't realize more than anyone else that Joan was missing more than a few of her marbles. He was so reserved and her delusional behavior was all too evident. When Louise was talking to Carol, Graham's daughter, and found out that David had made accusations against Louise, saying that she had killed Mrs. Graham and married Mr. G. just to get David back, I couldn't believe that this was his way of handling matters. Anyone's natural reaction would have been to run. David had so ably avoided commitment and possessive behavior on Louise's part in the past, that this plot turn didn't ring true.
Then I realized that that was all part of Louise's delusion and wasn't really happening at all! Carol was really sweet and innocent and had no idea what was really going on. The fact that she was dressed differently in the fantasy than she had been at the theater was a detail that the viewer realizes only after the fact. That's when I started paying more attention to the clothing, to try to see where Louise was really going through something and where she was inventing it all in her own mind. The movie drew me in completely at this point.
When Louise asked Mr. Graham for a divorce, she played her paranoia perfectly. I was very impressed with Joan in this scene. Of course, when poor Mr. Graham decided that the only way to get Louise to overcome her fears of Pauline (his first wife) was by going to the lake house and facing those fears, it was so obviously the wrong thing to do under the circumstances. I guess he didn't know what those circumstances were, the poor idiot.
The lighting when she enters the house, the fact that she sees a woman's arm shutting the window and reminded her of her former invalid patient and supposed murder victim, all of it was so well done. Louise's relief when she lights the fire, turns the light on in the room and makes things seem "normal", is done wordlessly and very well. Her fear at seeing the housekeeper an hearing her voice, then her terror when the buzzer started going off and her disorientation at feeling as she had when Mrs. Graham used to summon her, all of it was accomplished in a single scene with no dialogue. The camerawork was perfect too, because as Louise passed the mirror she entered the darkness again and returned to her delusional version of things. The fact that the buzzer sounds to her like her own name, Louise, and the fact that the lights still say Mrs. Graham's bedroom on them were perfect touches.
When we hear the screams from Mrs. Graham's room, we assume the worst, and this movie is great while letting us imagine what Joan might be imagining. It's when it shows us things explicitly a little further one that it begins to disappoint. When Mr. Graham ran up the stairs and confronted the so obviously imbalanced Louise, his reaction seemed too pat and simplified to me. "Look, there's no one there," was his contribution to bring her back to reality. As if the problem were that easy to solve. When Mr. G. asked Louise, "What on earth do you mean?", it seemed so silly. As if he had been dealing with a rational person. Louise's convoluted explanation that Pauline (the first Mrs. G.) would be waiting for her by the lake and that Pauline wanted Louise to kill herself was an explicit show of her mental illness. Anyone should have realized that Louise's problems were deep-rooted. Then the writers gave Louise a moment of lucidity, which Joan played perfectly. She admitted that she couldn't tell the difference between reality and fantasy. When Louise confessed that she had killed Pauline, that she helped her commit suicide, the writers blew it. They made Mr. G. wrap up everything and "solve" the problem too easily with Massey's explanation of what had really happened the night Mrs. G. died. He knew that Louise hadn't killed Pauline, but by telling her that, he should have realized that it wouldn't make things right. "If you'd told me before I could have helped you." How could he think that things would be so easy to solve? Well, perhaps that's why his first wife was driven to suicide. Maybe he habitually offered pat solutions to huge problems.
The happy music right then almost made my stomach turn. When I saw Joan at home again with all well with the world, I suspected that the writers were taking the easy way out. Thankfully, the movie had a few more good moments before slipping into tying up the loose ends. Louise had to face David at the nightclub and fell once again into that maniacal laughter, I for one wondered why no one else noticed that something was seriously wrong.
Louise's confiding in Carol about David, when she shut the door and told her that David was in love with someone else, that it was Louise in fact, and that he only used Carol to see Louise, showed that her delusions were finally totally out of control. The viewer knows that everything will blow up before too long. This is where things started getting resolved in less than satisfying ways for me. Mr. Graham's dealing with David, Carol and Louise, confronting his wife with her lies. I know that people do go into denial, but his treatment of her seemed to be too much, especially since he'd already been through the suicide of his first wife. The shooting of this scene was interesting, though, and I couldn't help wondering whether it wasn't another of Joan's delusions and not really happening. When Graham said that he had called in a "mental specialist", I thought, this is in her mind, this is what she fears and isn't what is happening. Then I saw that she had on the same dress that she has found in when she was walking around at the beginning of the movie, and I knew that we were cutting to the chase.
Joan's final confrontation with Van Heflin was a good one, and I liked some of his lines a lot in this scene, especially when he slapped her and said, "I'm sorry Louise, I seldom hit a woman but if you don't leave me alone I'll end up kicking babies." Their interplay was interesting, and VH's attempts to regain control of the situation and save his own life were well done, I thought. Later, Louise's memory of David's murder was vivid, but I once again found myself wondering whether I was seeing her delusion or reality. I was eating it up!
Unfortunately, that's when the movie took a downward turn for me. Graham showed up at the hospital and confirmed that Louise had indeed killed David. The doctor's hogwash explanation about her being possessed of the devil was really off the wall. Plus the way he said that she didn't suffer at all in her current state, after having just seen her relive the murder and have to be sedated screaming, "David, David, I killed him!" I would have fired this quack in a heartbeat. The elementary explanation of the insanity defense available to her seemed too pat and Graham's determination to make things as they were, even after this woman had killed someone due to her delusions also seemed too pat. Just one more example of not being able to end a movie correctly. Don't know how I would have ended it, but differently.
Joan was given a great part and did a lot with it. I give it ***1/2 out of ****, for Joan's performance. The half point is my nod to the plot deficiencies.