#27: High Noon

This week's weeks review is High Noon.  Now I actually was looking forward to watching this movie but that may be due to last week's movie (I mean anything compared to that will be better).  I do not have much experience with Westerns, but that most likely stems from the fact that Westerns aren't as popular as they used to be and I hate old things, speaking of, despite this being made in 1952 it is still in black and white (ugh).  Anyways given this wasn't The Philadelphia Story it was a lot easier to cowboy up and watch the film this week.

High Noon was one a the first movies to be set in real time.  Meaning that movie time and real time move at the same rate.  This caused me to think of this every time they looked at a clock

 Except instead of Jack Bauer kicking ass it is a sheriff.  This film was also selected from preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".  I have no idea what this really means but it makes this movie seem really important.  Also feel free to look up what this means for me, I'm to lazy.  Also John Wayne hated this movie because it was an allegory for blacklisting......Anyways!  This film is also referenced in Die Hard:

High Noon was also nominated for seven academy awards, including Best Picture, winning four for Best Acting in a Leading Role - Gary Cooper, Best Film Editing, Best Music Score, and Best Music Song.  All of this is neat but nothing is still as cool as being mentioned in Die Hard.  Oh, did I mention Die Hard is my favorite movie. 

Now we will take a look at how the wise people, like yourself, who rate thing on the internet felt about this movie:
IMDB= 8.3 out of 10
Rotten Tomatoes (Critic Rating)= 96%
Rotten Tomatoes (Audience Rating)= 87%
Once again we see that these movies, so far, have continued to be well received.  Though this film did not rate as high as The Philadelphia Story I just assume people didn't realize John McClane is a fan of this movie (If they did everything would be at 100%).

 Enough with the critics' opinion now its time for mine.  Starting with the characters.  First off there were many characters in this movie but most of there were small characters who were only in a few scenes.  The acting ranged all over the place.  Some actors were great while others were horrible.  My mom even pointed out how far acting has come since then.  The delivery of their lines just seemed so bland and they were sometimes be long pauses before the other person spoke.  It was very awkward.  The bad guys in this film I felt were under used.  The movie would continue to show them sitting around yet they never developed these characters.  I know one of them had a name but I am not sure if the other two did.  This surprised me since the "bad" in The Good, the Bad, the Ugly was one of these nameless baddies.  Now to continue on with the bad guys they did have a leader named Frank.  Once again he was still not developed really, this is really strange since he is the main antagonist.  Katy Jurado played Helen Ramirez, who was a pretty main character of this film, might have been one of the worst actors in the movie.  Every time she came on the screen I would let out a sigh just due to her horrid acting.  Even my girlfriend felt she was a horrible actress.  Then to top it all off she said one of the stupidest things ever:

 I hate when people say this.  Also by people I mean girls.  I haven't met a guy who has said this.  Then we have Lloyd Bridges playing the Deputy.  This character was very interesting I felt but once again I wish he was in it more and his conflict was a bigger plot in the film.  Now we have the very attractive Grace Kelly who plays the wife of our main character.  I really liked her character and I felt they not only gave her a good background to help define her character but she also had some nice character development through the movie.  Gary Cooper, who played main character in this practically one-man-show, was awesome.  He was just one of the main characters who is just so cool and tough that it is hard not to like him, which is really good since he is the only character who gives a great performance, is developed well, and is given adequate screen time.  Some character had some of these qualities but Gary Cooper's character was the only one who had all three.

I really liked the story of this film.  It was simple and yet I was extremely engaged.  The real time aspect of this movie made it really interesting and I found myself looking at the play time on the DVD payer to see how much time was left.  There were some funny things with the script like a few bad lines and a weird no cursing thing (I mean a character really said "Well, I'll be......"  That's it, nothing else.  What will he be?  What was he trying to say?).  Anyways, the great stroy made up for this thought I did learn some things from this movie:
#1: No one likes cops
#2: Kids hate going to church
#3: Loitering is a popular activity for troublemakers
#4: Helping people doesn't pay off
Interesting how somethings never change.

Now, lets look over some of the miscellaneous things that also add or subtract from this movie.   I know the music won academy awards but I do not understand why.  The music was so over dramatic all the time.  I even started to jokingly gasp each time they played it, escpeially becasue it didn't take much at.  Pretty much all it took was someone entering the room:

Also the set looked cheap at times but it wasn't horribly noticeable.  On the positive side the cinemotogrpahy was great in this movie.  There were a lot of really cool shots and I was impressed that they were able to do given the time the film was made.

In conclusion, I really liked this movie and many of its flaws did not seem to matter where compared to the film's strengths.  This is still one of the few Westerns I have seen and this one made me really excited to see more which is good because there are a lot of them on the AFI top 100.  Hopefully they will have better acting though.  So, my grade for this movie is a solid B.

#45: The Philadelphia Story

This week I watched The Philadelphia Story.  When I first put this in my Netflix queue list I thought it was a movie about AIDs and homosexuals... I was wrong.  Just so you don't make the same mistake as me.  This is Philadelphia, this is The Philadelphia Story.  Now, as I have mentioned before, I do not like old movies, especially black and white movies, so I really did not want to watch this.  I was trying to convince my girlfriend to watch a different movie but she didn't want to.  So like I said, this week I watched The Philadelphia Story.

The Philadelphia Story is based off of a Broadway play of the same name and was also Kathrine Hepburn's first major role after a series of flops and even used the help of Howard "The Aviator" Hughes to get the rights to the play so she could star in the movie.  Why don't actors do this more often?  maybe the do, but I feel that it would be cool to buy the rights to a movie just so you could act and look awesome in it.  The Philadelphia Story was nominated for six Academy Awards and won two: Jimmy Stewart (also why did I grow up my whole life calling him Jimmy when in the credits his name is James?) for Best Actor and Daniel Ogden Stewart for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Now lets take a look how the interwebs has critiqued this film:
IMDB= 8.1 out of 10
Rotten Tomatoes (Critic Rating)= 100%
Rotten Tomatoes (Audience Rating)= 92%
So looking at these score I feel like this movie has to be one of the greatest movies of all time.  Though critics gave it fantastic reviews audiences seem to give the movie around a B+.  These rating gave me some hope as I watched the movie.  The internet can't be wrong, can it?

Now its time for my personal look at the movie, starting with the characters.  We will start with Mother Lord and Father Lord.  They are fine and do not really have big enough roles.  Honestly I felt at times as if these characters were not really needed.  Uncle Willie is... well he is creepy (more on that later).  Dinah is a great character and very funny.  My only negative thing to say about this character is that I wish she was in it more and did funnier stuff.  Now one of the other funny characters is Elizabeth Imbrie played by Ruth Hussey.  She has a real quick wit and just great comedic timing.  Her character was very enjoyable and I wish she had more opportunities to show her comedic skills.  John Howard as George Kittredge was important as far as plot goes but as a character was boring, bland, and not very likeable, though that may be the point of the character.  Now we will get to the three stars of the film, Cary Grant, Kathrine Hepburn, and James (Jimmy) Stewart.  Cary Grant plays Dexter Haven and my girlfriend loves him, I don't know why.  My thing with this character is that I am not sure if I am supposed to like this guy and root for him or not like him at all.  I have a hard time being neutral on characters and I want to but Dexter into one category or the other and by the end of the film I wasn't sure how the audience was supposed to feel about him.  James (Jimmy) Stewart plays Macaulay Connor.  While watching this movie I realized James (Jimmy) Stewart plays the same character in everything he is in (Note: I have only now seen him in this and It's a Wonderful Life).
Here he is in It's a Wonderful Life:

And here he is in The Philadelphia Story:

Now just because he seems to act the same in his movies doesn't make him unenjoyable.  Actors like Michael Cera, Jennifer Aniston, and Ryan Reynolds seem to play the same characters all the time and I still like them.  Finally we will talk about Kathrine Hepburn.  First off I need to ask if you guys think she has annoying voice.  After the movie my mom and girlfriend were discussing Hepburn and her voice and how it wasn't as annoying in this movie as it is in other movies.  I didn't notice anything wrong with her voice and felt out of the loop so maybe you guys can help me out.  Ok moving on, I didn't feel like she was anything special in this movie, especially given that this was a break out role for her of sorts.  She did play off the male characters well though.

Now the story is really what made this film not workout for me.  I don't want to spoil the movie so I won't go into details.  The premise that I thought the movie was originally going to go for when James (Jimmy) Stewart's character showed up would have been great but it seemed that idea lasted about 30 seconds.  Then the story went into this messy love triangle story where I wasn't sure which character I was supposed to want to get the girl in the end.  This "romantic" movie's ending really got me confused but I don't want to spoil it here.  Also I learned two things from this movie:
#1: Domestic abuse is fine and even funny?
#2: Sexual harassment is funny, especially if it comes from a family member
I am not a hardcore feminist or anything but wow did this movie seem to show that females are men's toys to play with.

Now lets talk about a few other things that go into making a movie starting with the lighting.  There were many times that the lighting was so bright or something it seemed that Hepburn was glowing, like she was some kind of angel or something.  I don't know if this was just the style back then or something that just happened more often in black and white movies or what.  I am not a film student or anything I just know it was weird.  Another weird thing was the costumes.  There was at one point where Kathrine Hepburn looked as if she was wearing a night cap.  I don't know if this was all the rage back then but it looked silly.

Overall this movie was okay.  It did have funny moments, even if I didn't understand some of the sayings, and the acting was good.  The think that really ruined this movie for me was the plot.  I can not get over how this movie views domestic abuse.    Also I do not understand why this movie is in the AFI top 100.  Maybe later I will feel different about this movie but for now I give this movie a D+