NEIL SIMON
Neil Simon, who died recently at 91, wrote one Broadway hit play after another in the 60s and 70s. He had three hits running on the Great White Way at one time! Mr. Simon cut his writing teeth working for Sid Caesar, Gary Moore and Phil Silvers. Though his plays were considered sophisticated fluff by serious critics, the public loved them. So did Hollywood. At least a dozen Simon plays made the silver screen, with varying degrees of success. The snappy one-liners that made “Doc” Simon rich are still present and still snappy. I’ve listed some of the best.
Leading the parade is the wonderful The Odd Couple (1968) with neat-freak Jack Lemmon sharing digs with sloppy Walter Matthau. The difference is the running joke, but it somehow stays funny. It is not hard to understand why both are divorced. This work led to a long-running TV series of the same name, with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman.
The Goodbye Girl (1977) stars Mr. Simon’s wife, Marsha Mason, as a recent divorcee forced to share an apartment with dancer Richard Dreyfus. It’s the standard Hollywood plot in which the couple starts out hating each other and gradually this turns to love (of course!), but the screenplay pushes this way above the usual.
Most of Mr. Simon’s work is autobiographical, and none more so than Biloxi Blues (1988). Matthew Broderick stars as a Jewish kid from Brooklyn washed up on the shore of darkest Mississippi for 10 weeks of grueling boot camp. Christopher Walken is on board as the drill sergeant from Hell (was this his first maniacal role?). The first two-thirds are genuinely funny. I thought the last part faded rather badly.
Barefoot In The Park (1967) doesn’t really have a plot, but doesn’t need one. It has one of the most engaging young married couples in cinematic history, Jane Fonda and Robert Redford. They are just so cute you’ll fall in love with them. Their first apartment is a fifth-floor walk-up and they have no money. But they have each other and love. Ain’t Hollywood wonderful? It’s interesting that this same cute couple shows up as wonderful senior citizens in Our Souls At Night (2015) and they’re still super.
In Max Dugan Returns (1983) a father who ignored his children until they were grown tries to make amends, which at first is creepy but then turns nice. More and more expensive presents are showered on his struggling single-mom schoolteacher daughter. Where the money came from is part of the fun. Jason Robards is the recalcitrant dad, Marsha Mason is his daughter. Also along are Donald Sutherland and Matthew Broderick.
Some other good Neil Simon flicks include Lost In Yonkers (1973), Star Spangled Girl (1971) and The Sunshine Boys (1975).
All of the films in this article are available on DVD. All are okay for 10 and up.
FUNNY WESTERNS
For lack of a better term, I’ll call this category Funny Westerns, and there is no better place to start than Cat Ballou (1965) . It seems incredible to me that 53 years have passed since Jane Fonda’s wide-eyed portrayal of the naive Cat captured the nation. Cat is a schoolmarm who not so reluctantly turns outlaw. Lee Marvin earned an Oscar in a dual role as Cat’s gunfighter-protector and his evil twin who sports a metal nose. Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole add just the right whimsical touch as strolling minstrels. This is a funny, original movie.
For outright belly laughs, few movies of any kind can top Blazing Saddles (1974). Arguably Mel Brooks’ best film, it is the story of a small frontier town tired of being pushed around by outlaws. Cleavon Little is hired as probably the only black western sheriff in history. Little’s ingenious use of whatever materials are at hand to fend off the bad guys is hysterical. Brooks stalwarts Madeleine Kahn, Harvey Korman, and Gene Wilder add to the mix. Not for the squeamish, but an absolute barrel of fun. Former Chicago Bear Alex Karras’ knockout punch on a horse is a scream.
City Slickers (1991) won Jack Palance a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the tough old trail boss on a dude ranch. Billy Crystal is always funny and the screenplay is a gem. Lots of laughs and a little heart, too. Give the sequel a miss.
In Destry Rides Again (1939) James Stewart is a nonviolent sheriff in a wild frontier town and Marlene Dietrich is the dance hall girl with a heart of bronze. This film is now over 60 years old and is still fresh and funny and loads of fun.
The endlessly facile James Garner is the centerpiece of Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) as another nonviolent sheriff with more brains than brawn. But he has lots of help from Bruce Dern as an outlaw brat, Walter Brennan as the basic Old Man, and Joan Hackett as the ditzy heroine.
Some other genuinely funny westerns include Bronco Billy (1980) with Clint Eastwood as the owner of a small western circus; The Rounders (1965) with Glen Ford and Henry Fonda as two cowboys with a feisty horse; and Bob Hope’s best movie, Son of Paleface (1952).
All of the films in this article are available on DVD. All are suitable for children 12 and up.
FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD
Most of us like to eat well. (A glimpse in a full-length mirror rather distressingly confirms this). Here are some excellent movies featuring glorious, mouth-watering food. Do not watch any of these on an empty stomach!
In Babette’s Feast (1987) two very religious spinsters take in a young maid (Stephane Audran). She is able to show her love, and bring tears to the eyes of the most Whopper-hardened junk food freak, by preparing a wondrous meal. A lovely, simple movie that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. The feast is to die for.
Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci are Italian-American brothers who own a classy (and failing) restaurant. Shalhoub is the perfectionist, no-compromise chef and Tucci is the more business-like manager who wants to lighten up and attract more customers. A banquet for Louis Prima and his band is to be their Big Night (1995). The preparation of this sumptuous meal consumes (!) almost the whole film. Not without serious moments, but lots of fun.
Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) is about a Chinese master chef whose three unmarried daughters still live at home. Everyone has difficulty expressing affection by any other means than the preparation and serving of incredible meals. Wry touches (the chef has lost his sense of taste; one of the daughters works at Wendy’s) add to the enjoyment. But the food is the real star. An underappreciated jewel.
In Tom Jones (1963) , Tony Richardson brings Henry Fielding’s wry and raunchy story of English life in the 1700's to glorious flower. It won a passel of prizes,
including the Oscar for Best Picture. The food scene between Albert Finney and Joyce Redman is the sexiest one ever filmed. It puts romantic dining in a whole new light.
The magical Like Water For Chocolate (1993) is about the youngest of three daughters condemned to stay home and look after Mama. Her thwarted love is expressed through cooking, and ,Lord, can she cook. Delicious movie.
The search for the perfect noodle to save a floundering cafe is the hilarious background for the weird and wonderful Tampopo (1986). Not for all tastes; you’ll know in the first 20 minutes.
All of the movies in this article are available on DVD. None are really suitable for children under 10 because they wouldn’t like them. Bon appetit!
GEORGE AXELROD
Young folks today (okay, anyone under 60) weren’t around when the Motion Picture Code forbade nudity, sex and dirty words. Now we have the ratings system and most anything goes. A few screen writers became expert at working around the Code and pushing it to its limit. Nobody was better at this than George Axelrod.
Three Axelrod screenplays were based on his own stage plays, and the best known of these is The Seven Year Itch (1955). Though watered down quite a bit from the stage version, it features a bewildered Tom Ewell smitten with an impossibly sexy Marilyn Monroe, and is still lots of fun. This movie contains the famous MM “blown skirt” scene.
Phhht! (1954) is another Axelrod stage play become screenplay and features incredibly young Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon as a divorced couple who discover they made a terrible mistake- not when they married but when they split!
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) is the final George Axelrod stage play to screenplay and is probably the best. Tony Randall, Jayne Mansfield, Betsy Drake and Groucho Marx (!) join in a spirited and humorous send-up of advertising, sex and morals. This film is still really funny and dead-on lots of targets.
Mr. Axelrod was also expert at adapting the works of other writers for the silver screen. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) is still as good a thriller as was ever made, with Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Harvey and a not-so-loveable Angela Lansbury in a real nail biter. Mr. Harvey has been programmed by the North Koreans as an assassin and Mr. Sinatra tries to deprogram him before he acts. Beware the cheesy 2004 remake!
Truman Capote’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961) features the elegant and effervescent Audrey Hepburn as the delightfully off-the-wall Holly Golightly, a stranger in a Manhattan paradise. The late Buddy Ebsen has a minor role and if I tell you who he plays it would spoil it for you. George Axelrod won the Oscar for his sparkling screenplay.
William Inge’s Bus Stop (1956) has Don Murray as a lonesome cowboy absolutely besotted by saloon singer Marilyn Monroe (who really gets to act up a storm in this). He decides to marry her but sort of forgets to ask her first.
Lord Love A Duck (1966) is an extremely dark comedy starring Roddy McDowell as, perhaps, Satan since he is able to grant all of the wishes of teenager Barbara Ann Greene (Tuesday Weld). The wishes and their granting get further and further out until the ending you won’t see coming. This movie is somewhat dated, but still a lot of fun.
All of the movies in this column are available on DVD. All are suitable for ages 10 and up.
ANNE BANCROFT
If she were a baseball player, you would say that Anne Bancroft could run, throw, hit, hit with power and field any position. Still gorgeous at 67, she was in over 40 movies. She was nominated for an Oscar five times, won once, and picked up two Tonys for her stage work. She died in 2005, leaving a bushel of fine performances.
After a series of mediocre to awful films, Ms. Bancroft broke through in The Miracle Worker (1962). She is Annie Sullivan, the hard-as-nails teacher of blind and deaf Helen Keller (Patty Duke). Annie cuts poor Helen no slack; her unsentimental approach increases the impact of this wonderful film. Both Ms. Bancroft and Ms. Duke won Oscars.
The part that has etched Ms. Bancroft on the American memory is Mrs. Robinson in Mike Nichols’ The Graduate (1967). She is absolutely perfect as the symbol of jaded maturity’s seduction of youthful innocence, as she lures the bumbling Dustin Hoffman to her bed. This film, perhaps more than any other, defined the 60's. Ms. Bancroft’s no-big-deal attitude toward her amoral lifestyle still shocks as it amuses. To young people, who were told to trust no one over 30, Mrs. Robinson was the embodiment of THE ENEMY. Oh, and by the way, at the time this film was made Ms. Bancroft was only 35 and Mr. Hoffman was 30!
A complete change of pace is 84 Charing Cross Road (1985), a very under-appreciated little gem. Anne Bancroft is an American teacher who strikes up a lively friendship, by mail, with cultivated British bookseller Anthony Hopkins. Ms. Bancroft’s savvy New Yorker is a perfect foil to Hopkins’ soft-spoken Londoner. A film for the mind and the heart.
Neil Simon’s Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975) is a comedy with tears in its eyes. As the suddenly unemployed Jack Lemmon’s sympathetic but wise-cracking wife, Anne Bancroft makes the very most of a difficult part. And of course any Neil Simon effort has lots of laughs along with the sadder parts.
The enigmatic Agnes of God (1985) is about a young nun who may or may not have murdered her own baby. This movie is certainly not for all tastes, but the performances by Meg Tilly as the young nun, Jane Fonda as a psychiatrist and Anne Bancroft as the Mother Superior are fine.
What if your troubled daughter told you she planned to end her life before morning? This is the dilemma faced by Thelma Cates (Anne Bancroft) in the haunting, nail-biting ‘night Mother (1986). Sissy Spacek is, as always, outstanding as the daughter, but to me Ms. Bancroft carries the film.
Ms. Bancroft was married to director Mel Brooks until her death. The only film of his in which she appears is the hilarious and clever Silent Movie (1976). Making a modern comedy without any dialogue is quite a challenge, but Mr. Brooks is certainly up to it and Ms. Bancroft’s presence is a real plus.
All of the movies in this column are available on DVD. All are suitable for children over 12.
CROSS-DRESSING
In spite of all the furor about transgender people, allow me a little political incorrectness. I just think a man dressing up like a woman is somehow innately funny. In none of these films does the man actually convince us he really looks like a woman, but that’s part of the fun- we are in on the joke and the other actors are not.
Absolutely no one in the world would believe Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag are women, but that doesn’t stop Some Like It Hot (1959) from being one of the funniest movies ever made. This is director Billy Wilder at the top of his game. Throw in a luscious Marilyn Monroe and Joe E. Brown as a millionaire smitten with the tarted-up Lemmon and it is a merry mess.
Dustin Hoffman has stretched plenty in his distinguished career, but never further than in Tootsie (1982). Unable to land an acting job as himself, Hoffman dresses as a woman and finds jobs aplenty. He also finds himself to be a better person! A very sharp screenplay makes this a splendid film, and Hoffman is perhaps the most convincing of all the cross-dressing men in the movies.
We do not for a moment believe that Robin Williams’ wife and children would not recognize him dressed as a woman in Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), but this being a movie, they do not. When he’s divorced and can’t live without being near his children, Williams dons female attire and hires on as the kids’ nanny. Hijinks follow.
The very idea of the urbane Cary Grant dressed up as a woman is both ludicrous and funny, and is both in I Was A Male War Bride (1949). At the end of an extremely convoluted plot, Grant has to pass as a woman in order to get back to America. And it’s much fun getting to and beyond that point.
The World According To Garp (1982), based on John Irving’s marvelous book features two separate men-in-drag sequences. John Lithgow was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for his role as Roberta, “the old tight end”. And Robin Williams (playing the title role) visits a women’s rights rally in drag. This is a pretty good movie but nowhere near as good as the book (surprise!).
I’m throwing in the Australian Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert (1994) with Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce and Terrence Stamp as unlikely drag queens because it was a huge hit and was also made into a Broadway musical. But I didn’t much like it.
It’s interesting that the only movies I can think of where the tables are turned and women dress up like men are miles from being comedies. In Yentl (1983) Barbra Streisand dresses as a male in order to get a good education. And in Boys Don’t Cry (1999) Hillary Swank dresses as a boy to pass in the street culture she chooses. Frankly, the charm of this movie eludes me, but it was hugely popular and Ms. Swank won an Oscar. There’s also Albert Nobbs (2011) with Glenn Close very convincing as a woman pretending to be a man so she can get a good job. Not funny!
All of the movies in this article are available on DVD. The first four are ok for all ages; the last five are for mature audiences only.
2017 SLEEPERS
Part 7
This is, I promise, the last article about good 2017 films missed by most fans. I finally found a DVD of The Insult I could watch, and decided to do just one more article on last year’s sleepers.
The Insult is a Lebanese film that is a cautionary tale for the world in general and the Middle East in particular. It is of course in Arabic and for a long time I could only find it with Arabic subtitles. Asheboro library to the rescue, with English subtitles! This movie got an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film but lost to A Fantastic Woman (from Chile).A Lebanese man carelessly insults a Palestinian worker. Then he won’t apologize. Then things escalate. It is altogether possible this could happen. Note that it does not involve the Israelis; all the combatants are Arabic. Well, the Middle East is a real mess and this film helps to show why.
Wakefield is very weird story starring Brian Cranston of Breaking Bad fame. What if you could observe your family without yourself being present? That’s the premise and while it gets a little hard to believe, it is engaging. The main character unwittingly discovers that from the attic of his garage he can observe his wife and family without their knowledge. He decides to stay there and is reported missing. Some of what he sees is good and some not so good.
Last Flag Flying features Lawrence Fishburne, Brian Cranston (he’s everywhere!) and an underrated Steve Carrell. They are Vietnam vets who served together. Carrell plays Doc Shepherd, who reveals to the others that he is widowed and that he has lost his only son in an Iraq battle. He does not want the young man to be buried in Arlington, but in the hometown where his Mom has been laid to rest. They decide to go get his body and take it home. They encounter miles of red tape but don’t give up.
There were at last count three films about Winston Churchill last year. Darkest Hour was nominated for an Oscar and so was Dunkirk. The third is named simply
Churchill and features Brian Cox as the Prime Minister. This is the imagined story of Sir Winston’s misgivings about the Normandy invasion and while it isn’t up to the first two films, it is interesting and well played by Cox.
And finally, there is the intriguing biofllick, Bombshell, about actress Hedy Lamarr, . She was a great beauty and played in various movies in the 40's and 50's. She also had a mostly secret life as an inventor! She invented “frequency hopping” which I frankly don’t understand, but I can tell you that it is a device still used in cell phones and other technology. Like many Hollywood idols, Ms Lamarr did not have a happy life. She was married six times and in her last years became a recluse. And yet- who knew she was this brilliant scientist?
All of the movies in this article are available on DVD. All are for grownups.
