All Fall Down (1962)

This is a movie I wanted to watch for a long while mainly to see an early performance by Beatty (3rd movie) and the other performances. It has a great cast with Angela Lansbury, Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint and Brandon de Wilde (the main character, though not top-billed).

It's an OK movie. Not exceptional, but still has good performances. 

deWilde plays a teenager (age 16) and plays the part pretty well--he's naive, idolizes his older brother (Beatty), and then slowly becomes disillusioned as the movie progresses. 

I know what it's like to idolize a relative like that, and then realize he's not so perfect and not right all the time, so I liked that aspect of the film. I also think Lansbury does a great job showing how overbearing and manipulative her character is. 

Lansbury and Malden play characters with differing political and religious opinions (he's liberal, she's conservative....he's a socialist and she's capitalist....she's a churchgoer, he's not....). I found alot of their interactions to be really interesting. In one sequence, Malen invites some homeless men over for a Christmas dinner. Lansbury wants them out of the house so she pays each of them ten dollars to get out.

There's an interesting scene where deWilde chops up some vegetables and mixes them together in a blender to make a healthy smoothie; I can't remember the last time a character in a film did that so that was a cool part. 

I read somewhere that when this movie was being filmed in 1961, Beatty's first two movies had not yet been released (Splendor in the Grass & Roman Spring of Ms Stone). He had only been known for television work, for dating Natalie Wood, and for being Shirley Maclaine's brother.

I liked the scenes with the two brothers together; I felt convinced that they were related and that deWilde idolized him. In the movie, deWilde is constantly writing in his journal, and I wondered if that indicated he would be a writer in the future, and if the writer of the original novel - James Leo Herlihy - based the character on himself. 

After watching this movie I was intrigued by the entire making-of process.  I wondered how faithful it was to the original book, and was curious about John Houseman producing it and that whole process.

If only DVD commentaries and special features were around in 1962.

Regarding the title, I think it should be called "Berry-Berry", since everyone says it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.  

New York Stories (1989)

This film came out in 1989, an anthology, composed of three short films (about 40 minutes each) from 3 directors.

Woody Allen has one of the films, called "Oedipus Wrecks". He plays himself, a single man who is dating Mia Farrow (who has 2 kids - one of them Kristen Dunst). He also has a mother who is always making disapproving comments, is overly critical, and generally overbearing. I have a relative with the same personality! There's a part where she comes over to his office and interrupts a business meeting. The old mother is played by Mae Questel who was the old senile lady in Christmas Vacation. She's really funny in this and should have been in more movies. I liked the short because it shows how Woody deals with her and learns to cope with her and accept her and I could relate to that.

I couldn't relate to the short film that Francis Ford Coppola directed. It's about a rich girl who lives in a hotel in New York. She has a famous musician dad (Giancarlo Gianni) and wants to see him reunite with her mom played by Talia Shire. There's also a new rich boy who comes from royalty from an unnamed country. The girl befriends him. There's also a robbery, and some funny moments with her butler played by Don Novello. He's the only down-to-earth character in this and funny; I don't know why he hasn't done more movies. Most critics don't like this short. It feels really choppy as if were three half-hour sitcom episodes cut to 40 minutes. His daughter Sophia Coppola co-wrote this, so there may be some personal/semi-autobiographical content in this, but I'm not sure. I know Francis' father was a professional flautist, so certainly there's a familial connection there.

In one scene, some of the characters take a stroll in New York's Central Park, and there's a cool shot of this awesome-looking bridge (see below). I'd love to see that bridge one day if I ever get a chance to visit New York:

Finally, Martin Scorsese's film Life Lessons is the first short, and it's pretty good. Scorsese only directed; he didn't write this film. Nick Nolte plays an artist in New York with a big studio apartment with lots of paint and canvases, and he has an apprentice/former lover (Rosanna Arquette) who lives there too. It's basically a simple story, and it's lighthearted and funny.  Nolte makes a good artist, I thought. Believable as he whips his paintbrush and oil paints on the canvas. He reminds me of a friend I had (who died last year) who was about the same age as Nolte's character in the film. We went to art galleries together and browsed and talked about the art. He even loved to paint on canvas (I have some of this paintings I want to keep) and inspired me to do more painting as well.

Fiddler on the Roof (1971) on the big screen

I had a chance to watch this movie on the big screen when it played at Chicago's Music Box Theater on Christmas day 2016.  It's rare for this film to be screened; usually it's seen as corny and sentimental, and usually not as highly regarded as some other musicals like Sound of Music.

But when it came out in 1971, it was the biggest box-office hit of  the year. It was probably "the last hit musical" to be released for years, since musicals started to go out of fashion by the 1970s.

I had forgotten that the story deals with traditional marriage arrangements, intergenerational differences, the coming Russian revolution and new political ideas, Jewish persecution in Russia, and immigration to other countries.

At the end of the movie, one character asks another, "What city in America are you moving to?" The other responds "Chicago", and that got a loud cheer from the audience, which was pretty cool to be a part of.

Directed by Norman Jewison (an Oscar-winner for 1967's "In the Heat of the Night"). The cinematography is beautiful, and the sets and costumes and impressive.

Read Dawn's post about this movie from her blog

After Tomorrow (1932)

Movies were only with sound for 5 years when Frank Borzage's underrated After Tomorrow came out. This may be one of my favorite movies I've seen from 1932. Really impressed me.

This movie features a standout performance by Josephine Hull, who only made a handful of pictures including Harvey with Jimmy Stewart nearly 20 years later. She's younger in this movie, but still very motherly, and quite an overbearing mother in fact.  She plays Mrs. Piper, mother to Peter Piper (Charles Farrell) and says things like, "in every man lurks a beast that can be aroused." Hey, that was pretty steamy stuff to say back then in the pre-code era.

Petey wants to get married to Sidney (Marian Nixon). But they're dirt-poor, and pinching every penny they have left. After all, this is the Depression (set in New York). Mother loves her boy so much that she tries to break up the marriage. Minna Gombell plays a much more verbally abusive mother to Sidney. And soon there is little doubt that the marriage will ever take place, even after a very funny impromptu rehearsal sequence.

You're A Big Boy Now (1966)

One of Francis Ford Coppola's very first full-length feature films, a coming of age comedy about lonely, virginal, nebbish young Bernard (Peter Kastner) who works in the library (on roller skates!) and has only one thing on his mind: girls! And not just any library, it's the New York Public Library. In fact, the city itself is one of the film's co-stars: lots of scenes in and around the streets of NYC and Central Park. Bernard's dad (Rip Torn) is also his boss in the library, always looking down on him and calling him "big boy". He has a buddy who teaches him about girls, smoking, and getting high. One day he sees a beautiful actress (Elizabeth Hartman) sitting on the "Alice" sculpture in Central Park, only to see her again and again in the days to come. Lonely, he paces the streets of New York and runs into his co-worker (Karen Black) who secretly has a crush on him. She finds him in a private peep show just as he gets his tie stuck in the machine. They walk the streets together and we're treated to scenes of NYC nightlife and movie picture marquee lights: some theaters showing a double feature of "Shenandoah" and "Father Goose", another showing "The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming".

The hand-held camera work and quick-edits is done in a style that was not uncommon for its time. Coppola was able to recruit numerous other well-known stars for this film in other supporting roles: Michael Dunn (Ship of Fools) as Elizabeth Hartman's fellow bohemian in the theater scene, Geraldine Page as Bernard's overprotective, manipulative, pushy, controlling mother, legendary Julie Harris as Bernard's landlady, and Dolph Sweet ("Gimmie a Break!") as the landlady's handyman. Bernard rebels at the end, throwing a fit in the library in front his parents which leads to a madcap, screwball-esque chase through the NY Library and the streets, ending up in a department store. Additional info: Songs are by the Loving Spoonfools. Page was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. This was one of just a handful of motion pictures that Canadian-actor Peter Kastner appeared in. He retired from acting for many years, and died in November of 2008. It was rumored that he was being considered for the lead in the "Graduate". He'd be a good choice; you gotta see this film. It's like a "60's" time capsule.