Digital Video Disc Round Up

Gee whillikers! Has it really been since I watched I Know Where I'm Going that I've said anything about the movies I've been enjoying? This must be remedied. I guess I've been talking about the Star Trek episodes I've been watching, but there have been a bunch of movies in there too. Eight of them, in fact. Summaries and judgements after the jump.

I watched The More the Merrier with my beloved wife and we both agreed that it was a worthwhile film for anyone who enjoys classic comedies. It starred Jean Arthur, whom you may recall from such films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Shane, and Biff Bang Buddy. Okay, so that last was an obscure silent film from 1924. But I throw that in there because Jean Arthur was able to make a successful transition from silent film to the talkies. Also, she was the female lead in that film in 1924. She was 24 years old. 19 years later she was still starring as the young, romantic female lead in The More the Merrier... at 43. Not only that, it would be another 10 years before she made her final feature film, Shane. I don't think she looked 53 in that film. She was 10 years older than Van Heflin and 13 years older than Alan Ladd.

The movie itself was pretty funny, though it wasn't a flawless winner of a comedy like Night at the Opera or My Man Godfrey. The plot is very specific to the year in which it was made, 1943, since it turns on the difficulty of finding a place to live in Washington DC as a result of the war. An older, wealthy man arrives too early for his hotel reservation and is forced to find a place to stay for a couple nights. He sub-lets a room from Jean Arthur and decides that she ought to have a better man than the timid, self-important committeeman she is currently engaged to. So he contrives to sub-let a portion of his room to a handsome young Army sergeant who is in town for a week before shipping out to North Africa. Hijinks ensue.

Next in line was a very arty German film called Wings of Desire. Apparently the director is a very well-known art-house director, but I'd never hears of him before. Also, I have just realized that the actor who plays the lead, Bruno Ganz, was familiar to me because he'd had a minor role in the dog's breakfast of a movie called Unknown that I watched some time back. The movie is about angels and the desirability of humanity, to know the passage of time and experience life with its uncertainties. It also stars Peter Falk as himself. Sorta. It's worth watching if you enjoy films that are introspective, have beautiful cinematography and are very deliberate in their pacing. I'm pretty sure this is one that my dad suggested.

I watch oddly juxtaposed movies since I don't deliberately order them in my Netflix queue. Well, in a while I'll get to the Yasujiro Ozu films and I did arrange them chronologically, but other than that... Which is why after watching a calm, beautiful movie I ended up with Downfall next. It was an interesting movie. I'm not sure how I feel about dramatizing such events, but I suppose that sometimes it is the best way to drive home the evil and horror of such things. Parts of that movie were very difficult to watch; the death throes of the Nazi regime really drove home that it was a death-cult tied to a political philosophy.

Seven Men From Now was a middling western that could have been quite good if they hadn't done several silly things. The ending was mostly weak and not all the motivations were clearly laid out or believable, but most of the beginning and middle was pretty good. The good guy was the good guy and the bad guys were the bad guys, which is always nice. And Lee Marvin is always fun to watch being a bad, bad man. Randolph Scott is the good man looking to hunt down the gang who killed his wife during their hold up of a Wells Fargo gold shipment. And while he's very good at what he does, he's not averse to a little trickeration when necessary. Too bad about that ending.

Okay, this is getting too long, I'll mention one more (the last I've watched from Netflix) and get to the rest (from the library) in my next post. This is one I know my dad recommended, and I'm sorry I listened to him in this case. I had seen part of The Dinner Game previously, on television, I think. And there was something about the comedy that I didn't like. I get that I wasn't supposed to like the man to whom unfortunate things were happening. And that the other guy was an idiot. I get it. But seeing disaster upon disaster pile up just wasn't funny to me. I felt sorry for the guy. So I stopped watching it. But my dad tells me that I have to watch it to the end. Okay. I figure it'll get better; there will be a redeeming moment or something. Nah. It was depressing to the bitter end. I need to ask him about that.