n_r_koch

A superb film that is damaged a bit by a mediocre score (it's Detective Movie Music, and it's all wrong for this movie) and the ending. Davis headlines for Wyler again but Stephenson is the standout as the lawyer at the center of the trouble. Underplaying all the way, he conveys beautifully the mounting hidden strain of an honest man caught between honor and friends. But Davis is also in fine form, and even looks a little sexy. Marshall is as good as he was playing another part (the lover) in the 1929 Jeanne Eagels version, which is also worth seeing. Despite the score and the ending the film is one of the pleasures of the period. The sets and photography are excellent as an atmosphere of Old Malaya is conjured up better than in a hundred color films. The writing carries just the right weight-- it doesn't feel like the adapted play it is. Director and cast all understand what they are doing. Sondergaard is a bit much, but she's not in the movie for long.

Screenplay: tripe Direction: competent FX: good Acting: excellent

A great true story is...made into a Football Movie in space? Harris is the coach, and Hanks the QB. Kevin Bacon? He's the RB who fumbled the ball in the 1st Quarter and must now redeem himself. Paxton? The Tight End who sprained his knee in the 3rd Quarter but somehow pulls through the pain anyway. The man in the simulator? He's the benched chap who is dying to be out there on the field with the boys. You know from Frame 1 that the Hail Mary will be caught. And the dialogue is not simply shopworn, it's so manipulative you can almost feel the heartstrings being tugged at.

And yet...Harris, Hanks, Bacon, and Paxton, play it with the sort of conviction that would be better applied to the last production ever of HAMLET. The last three are shot in close-up, just like M. Falconetti, for almost the entire film. If any one of them doubted for one second what he was doing, the movie would fail.

The 1930s (Rest In Peace) were the Golden Age of screen writing. But right now, right under your nose, is the Golden Age of screen acting, and no one will realize it until it's gone.

A consistently watchable and fascinating peek at the anxieties of assimilated American Jews. Imagine a 1940s movie shot in the style of a shampoo ad, peopled with models, dressed in mail-order catalog furniture and clothes, and tracked with a lot of anxious, booksy verbal exchanges. You'd have this tale of a family of Jewish small businesspeople that marries into Goy-land-- a den of vixens with "foreign" names like TIFFANY and CARLA. LILY's otherness is downplayed throughout the series. This was presumably done to broaden the show's appeal, a detail almost as fascinating than the details of the writing. All the clichés of the Assimilation Genre turn up: the Evil Nordic Boss, the Repressed Wasp Wife, the Funny Jewish Doctor, the Crazy Shiksa, and so on. You can almost tell what the characters are going to say before they open their mouths. But not even Grace shows an iota of curiosity about what lives outside the snug little bubble.

There's even a casting joke: just like the sexy fantasy wives in DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, the sexy Jewish Girls are played by Gentiles-- one of them from Mississippi, no less!