David Vining's Blog, page 201

Kiss Me, Stupid

For the second movie in a row, Billy Wilder chose a prostitute to carry a film, and this time it works better. It helps that the movie is only two hours long, providing greater focus which enhances the final emotional impact.

Dean Martin stars as Dino, essentially Dean Martin, as he drives from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, hits a roadblock, goes on a detour, and ends up in Climax, Nevada, an out of the way town of a few thousand. There, he encounters Barney and Orville, a pair of aspiring...

Irma la Douce

This is the first Billy Wilder movie that feels overlong and unfocused, barely missing the mark. There’s a lot to really enjoy in Irma la Douce, but at two and a half hours, the movie doesn’t effectively fill its runtime creating distractions while inefficiently telling what should have been a rather simple story.

Jack Lemmon plays Nestor Patou, an earnest and honest police man who takes up his new beat at Les Halles, a large food market in Paris, where he meets Irma, played by Shirley...

Movie News – Week of 11/25

News that caught my eye:

‘Star Trek’: ‘Fargo’ Creator Noah Hawley to Direct Next Film

I overall like the newStar Trek films, so this is nice news. It’s not the mysterious Tarantino project (that no one knows anything about other than it exists in some form), but a direct sequel toBeyond. Pine was the big holdout amongst the cast which, I believe, was only ever signed for three movies. So, this is nice.

Oscars: War Epic ‘1917’ Crashes the Race

No, I don’t care about the Oscars. However, the...

One, Two, Three

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After The Apartment, Billy Wilder returned to his native Europe and a more explicitly comic sensibility. It’s a steady build of comic tension that explodes into madcap energy by the end, and I find it absolutely riveting.

C.R. MacNamara, the head of Coca Cola’s operations in West Berlin (immediately before the construction of the Berlin Wall which started construction during filming), is trying to find his way back up the corporate ladder after a disaster in the Middle East that sent him...

The Apartment

This is the perfect encapsulation of what made Billy Wilder great. It contains his thematic focuses, some of the best performances he ever got from actors, the most effective and beautiful black and white photography, and the best combination of comedy and drama. It’s billed as a comedy, but it’s dramatic elements are so strong that it ends up connecting emotionally in ways that some of Wilder’s more overtly comedic films don’t. It’s a triumph, and Wilder’s best movie.

C.C. Baxter is a...

Some Like it Hot

This movie is about as pure entertainment as movies can get. It’s an expert mixture of comedy, tension, sex, and romance that creates such a complete package of good times that Hollywood has very rarely come close to matching. Working with I.A.L. Diamond for the second time after Love in the Afternoon, Billy Wilder crafted an essentially perfect film.

Set during Prohibition, we follow two jazz musicians after they witness a gangland murder and try to run for their lives. They’re broke and...

The Jungle Book (2016)

Out of all the animated movies Disney has chosen to remake, updating The Jungle Book from 1964 was probably the smartest bet. The original film is barely a movie and more a loose collection of vignettes that involve the same characters. Most of the songs are completely forgettable, and there’s no real narrative drive propelling the thing from one scene to the next. Well, Jon Favreau did his best to address that issue from the original, but the film ends with such a confused series of actions...

Witness for the Prosecution

Billy Wilder and Agatha Christie, a match no one expected but was eminently welcome once it arrived. From Christie’s stage play, Wilder created a fun, energetic, and rather unpredictable courtroom drama with wonderful characters, anchored by the great performance by Charles Laughton.

Laughton plays Sir Wilfred Roberts, a barrister in London having just returned to work after suffering a heart attack. Tailed by his doting and nagging nurse, played by Laughton’s real life wife Elsa Lanchester, Sir Wilf...

Love in the Afternoon

After a brief respite, Wilder is back with more light comedic romance. In some shallow ways, it’s almost a remake of Sabrina, though it’s a bit less charming and a good bit longer, and yet it’s still a nice time at the movies.

Claude is a private investigator in Paris, tailing the wife of a client. Coming home from a long night of spying, he greets his charming daughter Ariane. Ariane is an innocent waif who’s become consumed by the files her father keeps in his home office to the point that she can recite...

The Spirit of St Louis

This movie sticks out of Billy Wilder’s filmography. It’s too nice, the main character too guileless, and there seems to be a complete absence of the common motif that appears in literally every other Wilder film up to this point. It’s a fine entertainment, but it almost feels like it belongs to another filmmaker.

Using a flashback structure, Wilder tells the story of Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight from New York to Paris, starting at the night before his run when he can’t go to sleep and his voiceove...