David Vining's Blog, page 99

Going My Way

Leaving behind films entirely and explicitly about WWII, the Academy chose to honor a Bing Crosby picture directed by Leo McCarey in 1943, and you know what? It’s really nice. It’s loose like a lot of McCarey’s other work, not really having a central plot but several prominent subplots that swirl around each other and connect here and there, all while improvising his way to nice little scenes throughout. Is it one of the better Best Picture winners? No. Is it a nice little addition? I’d say ...

We Have a Ghost

I don’t think there’s a more disappointing young filmmaker today than Christopher Landon. The feature film of his that first brought him to my attention was Happy Death Day, a delightful little romp through Groundhog Day antics. That success lead to serious attention from Blumhouse who started throwing money at him to make movies quickly with decreasing results. First, the uneven and bloated but mildly entertaining sequel Happy Death Day 2U followed by the disappointing genre mashup Freaky. ...

Casablanca: A Second Look

Damn…do I love this movie.

It really does seem to represent the peak of the entire studio system. Made just a few years before the system began to collapse because of post-war influences like the DOJ’s efforts to break the vertical integration of the market, forbidding studios from owning theater chains which cut heavily into their profits which, when, combined with the increasing power of individual stars and directors (because of tax changes from a decade before that had made it less en...

Mrs. Miniver

I remember liking this a whole lot more when I first saw it more than fifteen years ago. I hadn’t thought of the film much over the ensuing years, and revisiting it as an older man, I see some of what I adored of the film at the time. However, I also see a weird melding of two different plot threads with very different tones and thematic focuses. I think there’s a clash that undermines the film a bit. On the other hand, the portrait of the quiet toughness of the British middle class is so en...

How Green was My Valley: A Second Look

Well, technically a third. I’d seen it before.

The only John Ford film that won Best Picture still ends up feeling like lower-tier John Ford work. Of course, that I still think How Green was My Valley is okay is just a testament to how strong Ford’s body of work is.

A lot of the joys here are where Ford was kind of great without really trying by the early 40s, in particular the visuals. From beginning to end, the film is gorgeous to look at, using the large, outdoor set of the mining t...

Rebecca: A Second Look

Dripping with atmosphere, brimming with wonderful performances, and feeling like there’s a ghost around every corner of the almost mythic Manderley, Alfred Hitchcock‘s Rebecca may be one of his lesser great works, but it’s still great. That we can talk about the gradations of his great films is a testament to how many he had and how skilled he was in general.

However, to attribute the film entirely to Hitchcock alone is to undersell how much David O. Selznick had to do with it. Hitchcock ...

Gone with the Wind

Now…this is a MOVIE. Huge, sentimental, melodramatic, earnest, detailed, ambitious, impressive, and eager to entertain across four brisk hours, David O. Selznick’s Gone with the Wind has dominated the popular cinematic consciousness over the past few decades for a reason. A few reasons, really. Made at the height of Selznick’s professional and creative powers, after he had gone independent from RKO and before his obsessive tinkering and control over the people he hired became a detriment, Go...

You Can’t Take It With You

Frank Capra saw the play You Can’t Take It with You by George Kaufman and Moss Hart and immediately wanted to make a film of it. Using his power as president of the Academy in contract negotiations with Harry Cohn, president of Columbia, to buy the rights and grant the assignment to Capra, an effort that led to his third Best Director Oscar and second Best Picture win. Released after one of the major dips within the Great Depression, it’s a wholesome tale of the common man finding common cau...

The Life of Emile Zola

The title of The Life of Emile Zola is not quite accurate. It does dramatize portions of Zola’s earlier climb in the French literary world, but only briefly. The bulk of the film is dedicated to the Dreyfus Affair and Zola’s involvement in it, culminating in his libel trial against members of the French army and self-imposed exile to France to avoid jail. It was an effort on Warner Brothers’ part, most notably after The Story of Louis Pasteur from the year before, to edge into the prestige f...

The Best Picture Winners at the Oscars: A Statement of Purpose Part II

Well, I’m back at it.

Not much more to say, but I’ll just add that this is where my previous reviewing is going to bite me a bit. Instead of doing ten like I would like to do, I’ve actually reviewed four of the next ten already, so to keep up with my preferred output, I’m going to have to rewatch four films and add some second looks.

Oh, I’m gonna do it.

I’m not some brave firefighter doing this. I’m just a dude who watches too many movies, and I should probably be thrown in a menta...