NinadeL

We'd almost forgotten what a beast Shane used to be and this was a great reminder. The family therapy with Angie in the lead was a treat and her speech was the first one that featured BLM and it all made sense, oddly enough. I love that Alice is bisexual.

In those days, there was a wave of Asian directors trying their luck in the West. And those films of theirs really did look different, and they also featured actors such as Law, Portman, and Weisz. Still, they rarely lived up to expectations.

The Misfits is one of the very popular breakout films. The main trio of Gable, MM, and Clift were at the end of their rope, as was the era in which wild horses lived free on the plains of Nevada. There's something symbolic about it that motivates viewers to come back again and again. Still, some perspective in the evaluation wouldn’t hurt.

I almost surprised myself when I found out that I liked Let's Make Love so much. Perhaps it's the classic "I'm someone else" plot, perhaps Yves Montand as MM's atypical partner, or the classic-sounding Cole Porter songs and prop work are a big part of the charm. MM is once again a revue girl who, although in her late thirties, is studying at night for graduation, and to keep her hands busy, she brings her knitting to the theater with her. This time she is not too skinny and the extra pounds are very good for her cleavage. There's not much more to say. The cherry on top is the cameos by Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly and the expected twist before the well-deserved happy ending.

All About Eve and perhaps Sunset Blvd. are classic examples of how Hollywood changed in the 1950s - until it changed completely. There was now more pressure, classic stars who had survived the war began to age inexorably, and the predatory youth slowly came to the fore. And that's exactly what these movies are about...

Marilyn Monroe, in her first major role, plays a burlesque queen trying to break the family curse. She believes that despite her profession, she is entitled to marital happiness... Ladies of the Chorus is a very interesting Columbia production, beauty alternates with splendor, and that classic 1940s feeling is still present. The plot is admittedly trite. Some scenes are just refined versions of situations we have seen many times before, but we don't have to spoil the experience for ourselves. Monroe is very enjoyable here, gifted in her acting, movement, and singing, and not nearly as artificial as later in her glory days. In memoirs about Monroe, we can read that although Ladies of the Chorus was a success and made economic sense, Columbia did not renew her contract and for the next five years she had to literally beg for every job under the 20th Century Fox brand. Hollywood was writing novels behind the scenes...

The Prince and the Showgirl is one of those films from the 1950s that has a really interesting backstory. Of course, its context was only rediscovered for the wider public on the occasion of the premiere of My Week with Marilyn, a nostalgic take on a Pinewood Studios romance. In fact, it was an interesting meeting over Terence Rattigan's play "The Sleeping Prince: An Occasional Fairy Tale" from 1953. The play was written to celebrate the coronation of Elizabeth II, is set in 1911, and is a rather endearing caricature of the politics of the time, as well as being a great London guidebook. Of course, this aspect is better in the film, but in the theater, it's the confident dialogue that takes precedence. Marilyn Monroe bought the rights to her new production and asked Laurence Olivier, the director and lead actor from the first production, to reprise his role and direct the film. This fact was somewhat overshadowed in its day by the sensational marriage of Monroe and Arthur Miller, and much gossip remains to this day. Yet what is the final film really like? It’s one of the least typical films of Monroe's late career, an almost mechanical flip of a theatrical routine that tries to make the most of her charm, Olivier's reputation, and Technicolor.

Karik's fable (bestseller) in the film version is one of the contemporary Slovak films with ambition. Unfortunately, it deceives us and offers only a naive local view of the genre, which is not easy even for larger productions.

At a time when Landsman already released six parts in the "Diary of a Modern Dad" series, it is no wonder that his fatherly stories are the subject of the feature debut of another promising personality of the popular Czech scene. With its introduction, it doesn't sound very appealing, and the casting of Mádl and Voříšková is also not surprising, but at least of the films Mádl has made recently (such as Waking Up Yesterday or Celebrity Ltd.), Diary of a Modern Dad is the more bearable of the bunch.

Pascal Quignard's 1991 novel of the same name focuses on the fate of Marina Marais and Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe. The setting of the musical scene at the court of Louis XIV is fascinating in and of itself, and if music dominates the film, there's not much to worry about. Simply listen.