Henry V (1989)

Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

Of all of shakespeare’splays, my favorite is MacBeth, which almost certainly means that Kumonosu Jo is my favorite film adaptation of a Shakespeare play. When it comes to the histories, nothing beats Henry V. For my money, the Kenneth Branagh version from 1989 is the best of these going. It’s got everything that I want in this story start to finish, and even pays a slight homage to the Olivier version at the start. It’s got the great speeches, great performances, badassery, and some great battle sequences. This is Shakespeare as it’s meant to be done.

In a nutshell, we have English King Henry V (Kenneth Branagh, who also directed) who is deciding to press his claim as the King of France. It’s only hinted at here, but before he was King Henry, he was Prince Hal, and he had as misspent a youth as possible. He hung around with thieves and gamblers and drunkards, making his eventual ascension to the throne a huge worry for the people under his rule. However, once king, Henry becomes a man of both action and decision, the sort of king that both the common folk and the nobles are willing to follow.

The Big House

Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

I suppose there are enough prison films that it forms its own subgenre. It’s not one I think of a lot, except to say that in my world, the best prison films are military prison films. A significant percentage of the great World War II films are set in prison. I’m less apt to get all excited when the prison in question is one for hardened criminals The Big House is one of the first films to show life in prison. According to the story, authoress Frances Marion spent time visiting San Quentin to get a handle on the dialogue and endured all manner of verbal abuse from the inmates and the guards both. In truth, that might actually be a better story than what we’re given on the screen.

Kent (Robert Montgomery) is sent away for 10 years for manslaughter, having killed a man in a drunken car accident. Kent is, as many of us would be, not really suited for prison, and things are immediately made worse when he’s housed with hardened killer Butch (Wallace Beery) and professional thief Morgan (Chester Morris). Butch tries to take advantage of the new fish, but Morgan appears to have something approaching a heart and looks out for the new kid. This doesn’t change the reality that Kent finds himself drawn to Butch and distrustful of his new guardian angel. Admittedly, a big part of Morgan’s heart growing three sizes is Kent’s attractive sister Anne (Leila Hyams).

Hot Millions

Format: DVD from Geneseo Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

There’s something in most of us that enjoys a crime film. I don’t know if it’s because we enjoy seeing the rich and stupid get fleeced or if we enjoy seeing the clever crooks attempting to doing the fleecing. This is especially true of con games. There’s a perverse pleasure in watching the con happen and seeing all of the pieces fall into place. There’s a reason that most con game films are either overtly or are at least partly comedies. Hot Millions is overtly a comedy. It’s a very British comedy, one that requires some effort on the part of the audience to find the funny. It’s rarely laugh-out-loud and much more content to go for a smirk and chuckle.

Marcus Pendleton (Peter Ustinov) has served his time in prison for embezzling, making himself useful doing small services like taxes for the warden. His career as an embezzler came to this temporary halt thanks to his being tracked down by a computer. Rather than causing him to decide that his chosen career is too risky, Pendleton decides that his best option is to understand just enough about computers to fool them. Bluffing his way into a private club, he tracks down a lead on a computer expert named Caesar Smith (Robert Morley). Smith, approaching retirement, has always had a dream of writing the definitive book on moths of the Amazon. Pendleton convinces him to do so, and usurps the man’s identity.

Little Women (1933)

Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I’ve made it a habit in general lately to stick all or most of the “very long wait” films on my NetFlix queue at the top of the list in the hopes of getting a film I might otherwise wait for months to get. It’s been working out in general, in no small part because I have so many of them that one of them is bound to be available. My luck continued, but also ran out this time, with the arrival of Little Women from 1933. I knew within the first 10 minutes of this that it was going to be a rough couple of hours.

I’ll put it this way—I thought upon watching Cavalcade that I wouldn’t come across another film of the same Oscar year that I found more tedious. Well, that ended tonight, because Little Women plays like a grade school stage play. This is acting broader than a typical silent film. I realize that the family in the film has fallen on hard times, but when they get sausages for Christmas breakfast, you’d think they’d all just won the lottery. And then, of course, they donate their breakfast to a poorer family who are starving and freezing cold and have a new baby, and oh! but it’s all so sappy and irritating.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1986

The Contenders:
Children of a Lesser God
Hannah and Her Sisters
The Mission
Platoon (winner)
A Room with a View

Morgan! (Morgan - A Suitable Case for Treatment)

Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on laptop.

Every now and then I find a film where it feels like the nomination went to the wrong person. I’m not trying to denigrate the performance of Vanessa Redgrave, but her nomination instead of a nomination for David Warner for Morgan! (also called Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment) seems bizarre. David Warner is the heart and soul of this film and it’s his performance that turns it from a little film about obsession and insanity into something potentially far more interesting.

Morgan Delt (Warner) is a failed artist and a communist radical. He also has a failing marriage with Leonie (Redgrave), who comes from a wealthy family. It’s never stated but somewhat implied that Leonie may well have married Morgan as an act of rebellion against her parents. However, she has had enough of Morgan’s various antics and has decided instead to divorce him and marry Charles Napier (Robert Stephens), an art dealer. Morgan is against this plan and will do anything he can think of to keep Leonie married to him. Because Morgan is also sliding directly into insanity, “anything he can think of” covers a lot of territory.

Judgment at Nuremberg

Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

There are a few films out there that are a wet dream from a casting perspective. Judgment at Nuremberg is just such a film. Seriously, Stanely Kramer must have conspired with the devil to assemble these people in one place. Take a deep breath: Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Widmark, and Burt Lancaster, four of whom nabbed Oscar nominations for this film. For fun, you also get early big screen appearances of Werner Klemperer and William Shatner. Holy shit, but that’s a cast that would make any director of the day drool.

The film takes place in the years following World War II, when various members of the Third Reich were put on trial for war crimes. In the film’s present day, the big trials are over and the surviving members of the Nazi brain trust and military have been dealt with. What remains are the civil servants, officials, and in the case of this film, judges who sentenced people cruelly, unfairly, or with malicious intent. American judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) has been sent to Germany to preside over the case of four judges. His appointed assistant, Captain Harrison Byers (William Shatner) gets him settled in and we jump right into the case.