Movie Geek's Blog

Cast:  Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman

Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius

The Artist works for an audience that have never experienced a silent movie before and is fascinated by knowing the facts that Hollywood was once Hollywood land. The Artist is a fairy tale for people who wonders about silent movies, instead of exploring them.

I have watched more than 200 films from the period of 1900-1930, so I can say, I have a fair understanding of the silent film era and the body language, they used to have, and this film over-stylized the whole environment of the silent era. This is one reason, we love Singin' in the Rain, because it was realistic. 

I really appreciate their effort and I also have an unsaid soft spot for movies about movies but I was disappointed with this movie.

Jean Dujardin was charming but was extremely one-dimensional. I really wanted to see how different George Valentin is off screen than On-Screen but he was shallow, he was given just one face to wear. On the other hand, Berenice Bejo, was really good at her role, she understood the ascent her character's life taken more than Jean Dujardin's understood his descent. It was definitely a good performance, but he won an undeserving Oscar.

The Artist is a good film, a kind that people remembers from a certain year but winning an Oscar for Best Picture is over rating it. Academy does this every time, they don't give the Oscar to a movie, they give it to a cause. Well then if it was for a cause I support the cause called "The Artist" and another cause "Argo".

Movie Geek's Rating: ★★★

-------------------------

Cast: Anthony Perkins, Karl Malden, Norma Moore

Directed by: Robert Mulligan

Fear Strikes out is the directorial début of Robert Mulligan. It is a sport biography of Jimmy Piershall; this film is about the rise, fall and rise of the former American Baseball center fielder.

The film starts with Jimmy as a kid working on his slides for his baseball games, while his father [Karl Malden] helped him with his practice. His father decided that the one and only goal of Jimmy’s life is to make it to the Boston Red Sox team. 10 minutes into the movie and we see a grown up Jimmy [Anthony Perkins] playing a baseball game in a small ground and with a little audience.

He was the best in the game in his small town of Waterbury, Connecticut. Scouts from Boston came down to watch him play, so as to sign him for Boston Red Sox trainings but even then, it was never good enough for his father. 

Not that he was a bad father, but he never had it easy. During the practice session in the first sequence of the movie, he was throwing the ball at little Jimmy with such an intensity that it was hurting Jimmy’s hands even though he wore a glove. When every one of his teammates was out celebrating for a game’s victory, Jimmy was not allowed to go as it would ruin his next morning’s practice session. 

Once he got selected for training with the Boston Red Sox, he met his future wife, Mary [Norma Moore] and when he proposes her, he is confused and psyched by his own decision, because he knows his father will not appreciate it and make it look like a “mistake which will affect his game”. His confusion and psych was shown in the hotel room scene when he is awaiting a call from Mary and gets angry at his neighbor because they were playing the radio too loud and there was a critical opinion on Piershall’s game on the radio. In my interpretation, it was making him weak to stand by his decision to marry Mary.

The pressure John Piershall puts on his son Jimmy is a lesson for parents of this era, when the world has reached to greater heights of competitiveness. The relentless pressure by Jimmy’s father affected his personality and pushed him on the verge of madness. 

Karl Malden as John Piershall, played the role of the obsessively driven father, who is not just working hard for Jim’s Career but literally believes that it’s always a shared dream. Jimmy usually tells “I did it”, but John maintains the ‘we’ part. It is always a Father-Son team for him and that’s why he is constantly pressuring him to improve, even when he actually needs to be acknowledged for the game he played.

Anthony Perkins have given a performance that might have prepared himself very well to play Norman Bates in the Hitchcock classic “Psycho” only 3 years later. He did some very intense scenes, that shown his capability to do dark characters. But the best performance of the film is by Karl Malden who equally shares not just the goals of Jimmy’s Life but this film.

Movie Geek's Rating: ★★★½

-------------------------

Cast: John Barrymore, Greta Garbo, Lionel Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery

Directed by: Edmund Goulding

"Grand Hotel; people come, people go, Nothing ever happens"

This film is not the greatest from the standards of today’s cinema but for the year 1932, it was an innovative step in the then existing line of films. Director Edmund Goulding took an ensemble cast of the superstars of that era and made a creative film of intertwining stories. The cast includes some iconic names of Hollywood, such as Lionel Barrymore and the greatest Greta Garbo; other great names were Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery and John Barrymore.

Plot: This is the story of multiple characters that spent 2 days in a hotel. Greta Garbo plays a ballerina who misses her country Russia and feels her life being empty and pointless and is saved by the charm of the Baron, played by John Barrymore. The Baron aims to steal her jewels and pay all his debts. Joan Crawford plays the stenographer and is trying to woo the Baron as she believes he is a rich business person. She is employed by the wealthy industrialist played by Wallace Beery; he also employed a dying old man, played by Lionel Barrymore, who is set to live rest of his life experiencing things he missed out till now, he eventually befriends the Baron. 

Greta Garbo’s character spent most of her part in isolation. Grand Hotel won the Oscar for the Best Picture at the 5th Academy Awards. It holds the record as the only film in history that won a Best Picture at the Oscars and had no other nominations. This happened because there were so many subplots in the film and it must have been tough to select one of the performances. Overall, the film was pretty interesting with all the subplots mixed and matched perfectly. Some of my favourite films with intertwined stories are Pulp Fiction, Amores Perros and Magnolia, although all of them are very different films in nature.