Primary Colors

I’m fed up with choosing movie myself, so I thought I’d find somebody else to do it for me. So I chose… Queerty!

So now I’m gonna watch all the movies they talk about for, like, a year. Streaming! It’s a concept!

Let’s see how that goes… I’m already pretty annoyed by the Apple TV.

Is that really John Travolta!? He’s s Clinton; he’s perfect.

Wow! Emma Thompson’s attempt at speaking American is horrifying!

Mike Nichols is not my favourite director. He’s so… normal. I’m guessing he’s got twenty five Oscars?

… No! Just one!

I sit corrected.

This is so corny.

I mean, I get the charm of movies like this… giving you a view into “how it really is”. (This is about Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign.) It’s well made — it’s very 70s, but with people’s faces powdered instead of shiny (the latter is, of course, the foremost marker of 70s cinema).

It’s all about matte vs shiny.

It’s very neutral. I mean, as a movie — the cinematography and the performances.

Now things got more entertaining!

This movie makes me so nostalgic for the 90s. When you could make movies like this — about politicians being basically decent.

Oops. I guess we’re in the third act now, where things to all dramatic.

…

Yup.

I hate that. I don’t think anything has been more destructive for film than the idea of the three act structure.

This is bizarre. Nichols is saying that … New York is just radical loons because… they want… “$ for AIDS research”…

I guess that’s the moderate position. And I guess Nichols is very “moderate”.

I hope this isn’t representative of Queerty’s taste level… because… this just isn’t that interesting. I mean, it’s not a bad movie in any way — but it’s so…

Standard.

Primary Colors. Mike Nichols. 1998. ⚃

Blue Skies

Gags!

Bing singing!

This is basically an excuse to do a lot of Irving Berlin songs — not a very ambitious movie.

But that’s fine. Sometimes these things can be pretty amusing.

We’re half an hour in, and Astaire hasn’t danced yet, which seems like a waste. I’m guessing… they didn’t have him for that many days, so they had to keep his dancing scenes to a minimum?

No sooner kvetched than he appears on screen! Putting on the Ritz! I’m flabbergasted!

That was teh awesum. But very short!

Sure:

Ever the perfectionist that he was, Fred Astaire spent a grueling 5 weeks rehearsing his dance routines for the “Puttin’ On the Ritz” number’s challenging and most irregular rhythmic tempo.

Most of the numbers are good — it’s the bits inbetween that’s the problem. It’s a very soppy romance (sort of), and it’s just kinda charmless? The chemistry between Crosby and Joan Caulfield isn’t there, so it’s a bit hard to care?

I’m not sure editing it down by, say, twenty minutes would have helped either — it’s just not very interesting.

This guy’s supposed to be hilarious, I guess? But he’s just kinda vaguely amusing? And the movie spends an inexplicable amount of time on his gags.

A snippet of White Christmas. *sniff*

And it is an extraordinarily white movie for a song and dance thing like this, come to think of it.

Blue Skies. Stuart Heisler. 1946. ⚂

Gloria

This is kinda high concept for a Cassavetes movie: It’s Gena Rowlands (yay) on the lam from the mob (eh?) with a whiny kid (eek).

With a cat!

But then they lost the cast. Boo.

Now that’s a nice pan.

The kid is doing the best he can? But it’s pretty horrible.

Actually… the kid’s getting better… did they film this in sequence or something?

I love these shots of 70s New York.

Now that’s a hi tone hotel.

She’s tough.

There’s a bunch of things I love about this movie. Rowlands, of course, but also just random things like how they depict cabbies being totally unfazed by picking up dames that are waving guns around. It’s like a tough guy (and gal) New York fantasy… it’s great. And it’s fun.

But.

It feels repetetive? How many mobsters is Rowlands gonna stick up before the end of this? It’s not like any of those scenes are boring or anything, but they didn’t seem to… have any effect on the story?

I’m wondering what Cassavetes and Rowlands wanted to do with this movie. Is it just a goof they did to pass the time? Did they pitch a “straight” action movie and a studio paid them?

I’m just saying that this seems like a very odd movie in their oeuvre.

Ouch:

The young boy Gloria was protecting, played by John Adames, tied with Sir Laurence Olivier (in The Jazz Singer) for the Worst Supporting Actor Razzie award of 1980.

Gloria. John Cassavetes. 1980. ⚃