The Comic Critic Reviews "Becket"

Becket is one of those historical movies created more for entertaining audiences than for being accurate. In the movie, Henry’s mother is alive; in history, she’s dead. In the movie, he has three children; in reality, it was eight. In the movie, the wife says she will return to her father; in reality, he’s been dead for some years. In the movie, both women torment him; in reality, he relied on their counsel. And perhaps the most glaring inaccuracy is portraying Becket as a Saxon when he was, in reality, a Norman. But film writers were never ones to adhere to facts when a good rewrite would create drama to intrigue audiences,  who probably forgot all their history lessons and now hear the name Becket only in plays and dramas. And audiences came to the theater because two of the best actors of the day are the leads and all the talented filmmaking professionals are doing their best to make Becket an award winner. Both Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton give tremendous performances. But it is the ever-talented, history-revising writers who would walk away with the statue.

Received an Academy Award out of eleven nominations.

The Comic Critic Reviews "To Have and Have Not"

To Have and Have Not was Lauren Bacall’s film debut and her talent was immediately recognizable. The chemistry between her and Humphrey Bogart was obvious. In the original script, Dolores Moran’s role was larger, with her and Bogart’s characters’ relationship having more depth. But everyone involved in the production immediately sensed the magic in Bogart and Bacall’s interplay. The script underwent revisions to take advantage of this. The novel was written by Ernest Hemingway. William Faulkner worked on the script, but a large part of the dialog was improvised by the actors themselves. Bogart was still riding high from the unexpected success of Casablanca. Audiences turned out to watch him continue to portray a tough character who plays low and cool, ruled by his own code. They were not disappointed; To Have and Have Not carried those same themes. But audiences were also rewarded with the performances of two actors falling in love on set. The studio would quickly parley this success into three additional movies featuring the entrancing duo, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and Key Largo. Bacall and Bogart did start an affair during the making of To Have and Have Not. Bogart, who was in an unhappy marriage, would divorce his wife and marry Bacall, who was twenty years his junior. They remained married until Bogart’s death from cancer in 1957. At his funeral, Bacall laid a whistle on Bogart’s coffin in homage to her famous quote from the movie, “You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow.”

The Comic Critic Reviews "Gentleman's Agreement"

I had a much easier time watching Gentleman’s Agreement when I was the same age as the boy in the movie. What I heard in the film were social instructions. They weren’t new. They were reaffirming what my parents taught me. But it was the first time I was seeing insidious examples of bigotry as well as obvious ones. The scenes I watched of Gregory Peck explaining the world and how his son should behave struck a strong chord in me. I remember thinking, “He explained that just right.” I found my recent viewing of Gentleman’s Agreement more difficult to watch. The viewpoint I’m associating with now is that of the adults, how the characters were reacting, their experience of recognizing their own actions, their casual privilege. And while I don’t recall seeing any obvious ethnic characters or extras, I can understand why: Gentleman’s Agreement focused on anti-Semitism to reveal the mindset behind bigotry. It’s just how I saw it as a kid, as an instruction manual to recognize and react with true, brave humanity. I found Gentleman’s Agreement difficult to watch now because you can easily replace Jew with Muslim to see the battlefield of bigotry is still here so many decades later. Exchange the word Jew with Muslim, Hispanic, Black or any other They instead of We.  It’s terrifying and saddening, and it makes Gentleman’s Agreement as relevant today as in 1947.

Winner of three Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

The Comic Critic Reviews "The Blues Brothers"

The Blues Brothers is in my Top One Hundred favorite movies of all time. While it never won an Oscar, it remains a cinematic treasure to moviegoers everywhere. The magical team chemistry of Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi is at its brightest. They would later team up to do Neighbors, which didn’t capture the same magic. It could be that in The Blues Brothers, Dan Aykroyd and John Landis joined forces to write the script, or that John Landis was definitely on top of his directorial game. But I’d like to think it was an even larger group effort. The music of The Blues Brothers and the exceptional performances of the musicians explode across the screen. The entire film feels like a celebration of sound and life. The villains of the movie are those that go against sound and life. And we know from the get-go that they don’t stand a chance to hamper the boys who “are on a Mission from God.”

The Comic Critic Reviews "Old Acquaintance"

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There’s nearly as much to the story behind the making of Old Acquaintance as there is to the movie’s story. The most notorious being that the two female leads loathed each other. Maybe it was because Bette Davis had had an affair with Miriam’s husband during production of another movie some time before. They were pros when the camera rolled. And no doubt, their off-screen relationship helped with their on-screen performance. Old Acquaintance easily passes the Bechdel Test. The women have names, they talk to each other, and their conversation isn’t about men. Men are a topic a portion of the time, but a great deal of the conversation has to do with careers and life goals. I noticed something else about the men. There’s hardly a scene where two of them are in the same room, let alone talking to each other. And something I found very interesting is that the main male characters in the story bear a strong resemblance to each other with slicked back hair, pencil mustaches, and wry smiles. When the war comes around, they become even more identical. The dialog is well written, so much so that the audience is tuned into the dialog, listening for the carefully selected words. When a blunt statement is finally made, it’s almost a shock as well as a catharsis. Old Acquaintance is a well-told and visually strong movie that’s become a staple amongst classics. And while I have fun with it in the strip, this film truly does show off Bette Davis’s eyes.

The Comic Critic Reviews "Mondo Cane"

Newsreels used to be a way of presenting news that was otherwise only heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. But it wasn’t long before the oddities of the world were also brought into theaters, the all too common history of sensationalism winning out over substance. While these short news features were a way to warm up the audience before the feature attraction, Mondo Cane is the first of these slightly blue voyeuristic vignettes I know of to arrive as a feature length film. Mondo Cane was the first to string together a collective of odd known and unknown cultural rites for the purpose of shock and social commentary. The depths of grief reflecting the deep love Americans feel towards pets was parlayed against dogs being used by different cultures as a meat source. Stereotypes were brazenly reinforced to a level of absurdity so that the audience fights back with the rational thought of the absurdity of stereotypes. The awful dubbing and odd selections of music* to go with the scenes are orchestrated to poke a stick at many societies’ conventions. Mondo Cane set the template for a series of exploitation documentaries. These in turn inspired others to craft their own documentaries in the same style. Sex, death, gluttony, and fanaticism have all been explored and have become a standard recipe used in reality television shows and Internet videos. Mondo Cane came out the year I was born and a lifetime of exposure has numbed me a bit to the movie’s original source material.

*The score, "More (Theme from Mondo Cane)," was nominated for an Oscar.

The Comic Reviews "Stalag 17"

A common question asked about Stalag 17 is, “Did it come from a book?” No, it didn’t come from a book, but from a fairly successful play. But like many scripts that arrive in Hollywood, it received heavy rewriting. Perhaps the reason the movie envelopes audiences is the great care Billy Wilder took to make sure the authenticity of the camp was captured as accurately as possible. You can feel the texture of the shabby barracks with its weathered walls and mud-slogged yard. Your skin tightens with the thought of the cold the prisoners are huddled against. And very prevalent is the dark humor flowing from crass mouths struggling to find cheer in a cheerless environment. Wilder takes us to a situation so true-to-life that, when the story starts and character motivations are revealed, we’re also made prisoners of the stalag and unfolding events. He worked to keep an air of suspense amongst the cast as well by filming the movie chronologically. He hid a key plot element from most of the cast until the last few days of shooting. Wilder so masterfully maintained the illusion that more than half a century later, Stalag 17 can still take viewers back to a frigid WWII P.O.W. camp as effectively as when it was released. And just as effectively capture new audiences with its story. It remains one of the best prison escape stories of all time.

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Won an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.