The Movies Of Alfred Molina

All movies starring Alfred Molina and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)

Maverick (1994)

Species (1995)

Before And After (1996)

Boogie Nights (1997)

Magnolia (1999)

Chocolat (2000)

Frida (2002)

My Life Without Me (2003, uncredited)

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

An Education (2009)

The Pink Panther 2 (2009)

Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time (2010)

Secret In Their Eyes (2015)

The Front Runner (2018)

Promising Young Woman (2020, uncredited)

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The Movies Of John Mahoney

All movies starring John Mahoney and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Tin Men (1987)

Suspect (1987)

Moonstruck (1987)

Frantic (1988)

Betrayed (1988)

Eight Men Out (1988)

Say Anything... (1989)

Barton Fink (1991)

In The Line Of Fire (1993)

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

Reality Bites (1994)

The American President (1995)

Primal Fear (1996)

Dan In Real Life (2007)

Flipped (2010)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: A Raisin In The Sun (1961)

An emotive drama about about race and class in America, A Raisin In The Sun only aims for the high notes. Staginess and an overabundance of overcharged moments hamper the film experience.

In a cramped urban apartment, the proud matriarch of a black family Lena Younger (Claudia McNeil) is trying to hold her household together. Her son Walter Lee (Sidney Poitier) is dissatisfied with his job as a chauffeur and dreams of going into the liquor store business. His wife Ruth (Ruby Dee) struggles with the family's tight finances and suffers from her husband's anger and unease. The couple also clash over the parenting of their young son Travis, who has to sleep on the sofa because the apartment is too small to accommodate the family. Meanwhile Walter Lee's younger sister Beneatha (Diana Sands) is striving to become a doctor, although her brother scoffs at her ambition, which he views as unrealistic. 

Following the recent death of her husband, Lena is about to receive a $10,000 insurance cheque. This heightens the tensions in the household. Lena wants to use the money for a bigger house, Walter Lee wants to risk the money on his liquor store business idea, and Beneatha's education is another deserving cause. Beneatha is also taking a great interest in her African heritage and culture, inspired by fellow student Joseph Asagai (Ivan Dixon), while she has another suitor in the form of George (a young Louis Gossett). With emotions reaching a boiling point, Lena has a key decision to make, and Ruth drops a new surprise on the family.

Not as much an adaptation of the Lorraine Hansberry play as a film capture of stage events, A Raisin In The Sun is directed by Daniel Petrie almost entirely in the confines of one room. With the characters and dialogue routinely over-agitated, almost every scene escalates to a heated dispute about race, ambition, God, heritage or money. The in-you-face level of intensity may work well on stage, but on the screen the absence of even a modicum of circumspection in tight quarters is at first tiresome and ultimately just strangles the breath out of the drama.

The issues tackled by the film are worthwhile and never less than engaging, revealing the spectrum of social pressures faced by a working class Black family not far removed from an oppressive past. The generational rift between Lena and Beneatha is an emerging stress point, a daughter veering into social and cultural interests deemed unthinkable by her traditional mother. For Lena the mere fact that the family has a roof of their own over their heads and can work with dignity to put food on the table is a great triumph. Beneatha wants a lot more, and now with a new decade beckoning and the influence of new friends like Asagai, she has the intellectual freedom to question fundamental assumptions while celebrating her African heritage in ways her mother could not dream of.

Walter Lee is a powder keg in the process of exploding. Disrespectful to both his wife and his mother, he is looking for a shortcut to wealth, and is obsessed by a get-rich-quick scheme that could jeopardize all that Lena has ever achieved for her family. The claustrophobia of the apartment is closing in on Walter Lee and mocking his life, which he views as a predetermined prison. He may now get paid to work for a rich white man, but he wants much more, and unlike his sister, he is unwilling to create the opportunity through self-betterment.

Most of the Broadway cast reprised their roles for the screen, and the performances are therefore not far from what would have been witnessed on the stage. The commitment is evident, but Petrie is satisfied with a room where everyone is over the top, filled with passion, and defaulting to profound moments and keynote statements. A Raisin In The Sun has plenty to say, and it's all in UPPERCASE.

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The Movies Of Tobey Maguire

All movies starring Tobey Maguire and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Ice Storm (1997)

The Cider House Rules (1999)

Spider-Man (2002)

Tropic Thunder (2008, cameo as himself)

Brothers (2009)

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Labor Day (2013)

Babylon (2022)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Westworld (1973)

A low budget science-gone-wrong thriller, Westworld is engaging enough but runs out of steam in its final act.

The Delos amusement park features three "worlds" to serve as vacation resorts for the rich traveler. Western World provides a taste of the wild west, Medieval World recreates the dark ages, and Roman World offers the sinful opulence of a corrupt empire. The resort is populated by highly sophisticated robots in human form, programmed to offer the human vacationers excitement, adventure, thrills and sex. The robots are supposed to never harm the humans.

Peter (Richard Benjamin) and John (James Brolin) are friends who travel together for a vacation at Western World. It's Peter's first trip, and he has many questions, while John has been at the resort before and is back for another make-believe dose of the western frontier. Once the vacation starts all seems to go well, with Peter and John enjoying interactions with The Gunslinger robot (Yul Brynner), the company of prostitutes, a confrontation with the Sheriff robot, and a wild bar fight. But the technicians running the resort start to notice that the robots at all three worlds are going off script, and guests are starting to suffer injuries. Peter and John's adventure will turn from carefree fun to deadly serious.

Writer and director Michael Crichton would go on and evolve most of his concepts about scientific inventions turning on their human creators in the wildly successful Jurassic Park. Westworld is more an incubator of ideas rather than a stellar film. There is plenty to enjoy and ponder, but ultimately the film boils down to two thirds seen-it-before western set-pieces and one third routine chase action, all hampered by stiff acting, wooden dialogue, and a pervasive sense of a cheap production trying to look more expensive than it can get away with.

While Crichton takes his time to set up the premise and sell the lure of resorts offering make-believe adventures for adults, the film offers little to explain what is going wrong and why. Faceless technicians scurry around with worried expressions when the robots start to misbehave, but other than some quick one-sentence theories about a contagion, not much else is presented to explain why the robots may have transformed into murderers. And the absence of a kill switch in such technologically advanced robots is a critical oversight that receives no attention.

Ironically, once the robots turn to killers, the film loses most of its thrust. The final third is a slow moving and relatively uninvolving chase between The Gunslinger and Peter. Crichton does offer a few ideas that would be picked up and developed in future and better film, including the robot's stubborn indestructibility and his pixilated point-of-view. And once the violence starts, the blood and gore visuals are not spared. But the climax is hampered by the absence of a credible threat: Peter always seems to be faster, smarter and more resourceful than the cumbersome Gunslinger.

Yul Brynner, packing a few too many pounds and barely saying 10 words in the entire film, nails the beady eyed look of a robot gone bad. James Brolin and Richard Benjamin are perfectly suited to the grade B production values.

Westworld is worth a visit, but it could have delivered more: what makes science veer off in the wrong direction is more interesting than a slow chase with a six-shooter.

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Movie Review: Murder By Death (1976)

A whodunit comedy satire, Murder By Death offers laughs aplenty but also runs out of ideas rather quickly.

The world's best detectives are invited to a spooky mansion for an evening of dinner and death. The detectives include Sidney Wang (modeled on Charlie Chan, and played by Peter Sellers), Dick and Dora Charleston (Nick and Nora Charles, brought to life by David Niven and Maggie Smith), Milo Perrier (Hercule Poirot, portrayed by James Coco), Sam Diamond (representing Sam Spade, played by Peter Falk) and Jessica Marbles (Miss Marple, interpreted by Elsa Lanchester). They need to overcome a rickety bridge and falling gargoyles just to make it into the mansion, where they are greeted by the blind butler Jamesir Bensonmum (Alec Guinness). Deaf-mute maid Yetta (Nancy Walker) is supposed to be helping to get dinner ready.

Their host is erratic millionaire Lionel Twain (Truman Capote), who promises them that one person in the mansion will be dead by midnight, and offers a reward of $1 million to whichever detective can solve the crime. In fact, by the time midnight rolls around two people appear to be dead, the rooms of the mansion are playing tricks of their own, and deep dark personal secrets about all the guests will soon be revealed. The detectives not only have to solve the crimes, but also fight to stay alive as they all come under personal attack.

Written by Neil Simon and directed by Ray Stark, Murder By Death is a good idea with mediocre execution. Making fun of the Agatha Christie-style detective genre is a promising premise, and the gathering of great minds in a stormy mansion to match wits with an evil schemer does set the stage for plenty of zingers, one-liners, and obvious convolutions. The great cast, spooky mansion setting and a clear sense of lighthearted self-depreciation create an agreeably entertaining film.

But the momentum only goes so far, and Simon surprisingly seems to have trouble developing the concept. The running time is about 90 minutes, and the first 30 minutes are fully occupied with the detectives arriving at the mansion. They all encounter the bridge, they all encounter the falling gargoyles, and they all encounter the blind butler, in what amounts to dullness by prolonged repetition. The remaining hour has an unexpectedly high number of flat patches. Too much time is invested in a limited number of gags, for example opening and closing the dining room door to find the room alternatively full and empty. This seems to go on forever and is repeated ad nauseam (and never properly explained).

To tide over the rough patches, there are jokes aplenty to keep things sort of humming along. Alec Guinness as a haplessly blind butler generates the most laughs. Peter Sellers mangling the English language with his eastern morsels of faux wisdom and trite traditional sayings adds plenty of fine comic timing. Peter Falk goes all-in as hard-boiled detective Sam Diamond. Less successful is James Coco as the food-obsessed Perrier, while Elsa Lanchester as Jessica Marbles is under-written. The cast also includes Richard Narita as Wang's adopted son, Eileen Brennan as Diamond's assistant, and James Cromwell as Perrier's driver.

Simon navigates the story towards his punchline, poking fun at detective stories that reveal key information in the frantic last few pages simply to try and outwit the audience. He probably carries that joke too far, as the rushed ending disintegrates into a muddled anti-climax of anything goes.

Murder By Death is a passable satire, and at the end, the butler maybe did it. Or maybe not.

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