As a sequel to the original The Odd Couple, this one doesn’t really serve any purpose. The story as much as there is of one doesn’t offer any explanation as to what happened in the relationship of Felix and Oscar in the last almost-twenty years. As a chance to see one last pairing of Lemmon and Matthau, it’s pretty good. When it doesn’t get bogged down with the pretext of having a story, it’s an often funny romp of a road trip flick.
I felt a bit out of my element with this one, being completely ignorant of Limburgish farmers and the Mafia’s involvement with cattle growth hormones in Belgium. The film didn’t really do much in trying to pull the viewer into understanding this world either. Matthias Schoenaerts on the other hand does a great job portraying the angry young farmer who experienced an incredible demeaning and life altering event as a child. The crime story is quite confusing from the start and is difficult to follow until the third act.
Oscar Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film of the Year
As an attempt to flesh out the story of the classic country song of the same name, this film has some highly questionable messaging on sexual identity. The teen leads’, Robby Benson and Glynnis O’Connor, performances are very earnest and they play well off of each other. The Mississippi setting and even the accents are fully realized and consistent, though I do question a bit how accurate some of the happenings were to the South in the 1950s.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I haven’t seen many films set amongst marine salvagers in 1840s Key West. Cecil B. DeMille directs an absolutely stacked cast including John Wayne, Ray Milland, Louise Beavers, Robert Preston, Susan Hayward, and a bawdy sea shanty singing Paulette Goddard. It’s a bit long and drawn out for the story, but it culminates with an amazing underwater battle scene that might make it all worthwhile. There is also an incredibly creepy ongoing bit where Ray Milland speaks for his dog Romulus. Cutting out that alone would have done wonders for the length.
Oscar Win: Best Effects, Special Effects
Oscar Nominations: Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color
After surviving a car wreck that killed her husband, Ellen Burstyn discovers she has the power to heal. Unfortunately the Bible thumpers in her hometown, including potential love interest Sam Shepard and her own father, can’t just let her do her thing and require that she dedicate her powers to their god. There is also a bit of additional religiosity in the portrayal of an afterlife, but the incredibly talented Burstyn commands the entire film with a serene agnosticism which carries the whole power of the film.
Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role; Best Actress in a Supporting Role
I unfortunately shouldn’t have watched this so soon after Come and See (directed by the husband of Larisa Shepitko, this film’s director). The setting and themes being so similar probably lessened the impact here. The story here is more focused, settling on one day’s experiences of two partisans who are sent to search for food and find themselves directly interacting with Germans. The events here are just as harrowing; the feelings of hunger, cold, and the deep snow palpable. War changes everyone; the two men discover that many of those changes come from the choices one is forced to make.
This is like the granddaddy of all disaster films. I’m super happy that an English version was finally re-found. Luckily it starts with a Biblical quote so you can be certain that what comes next is all fiction. They don’t even bother at all giving a real explanation for the disaster just a vague ‘barometer falling’ and an unexplained solar eclipse. The viewer just needs to know that the world is falling apart. And indeed those lovely models of NYC fall apart in hundreds of different ways. Luckily there’s enough to salvage for the survivors to be clothed and fed beautifully, but the story then becomes rather drawn-out and boring. Poor Peggy Shannon has to spend too much time running, and swimming, away from awful men. In all seriousness when rebuilding a new society, you really shouldn’t hold yourself to the stodgy conventions of the old. Build back better!
Watching the NC-17 version, I have never seen such lengthy explicit sex scenes outside of porn. While framed beautifully, I’m not sure the exact purpose the length of these scenes offered to the narrative. The rest of this tale, set in China during the days of World War II, is similarly beautiful. Tang Wei is transformative in her lead role. She believably switches from shy college student who is a member of a patriotic drama club to worldly, seductive spy bent on assassinating an agent of the Japanese puppet government and back again several times over the course of the film. Tension is held throughout the film and there are incredible subtleties in the performances of each character as their expressions do and don’t bely their feelings.
I truly don’t understand Marlon Brando’s acting. He certainly has a presence on screen, but his weird, mumbly elocution pulls me away from his characters almost every time. His direction is similarly uneven. There are scenes where it seems he’s going for ultra-realism, but then it’d veer into the convenient coincidences of any light-weight film. Here he’s Rio, a bank robber who was deserted by his partner, played by Karl Malden, when they are tailed by the Mexican police after one of their big scores. Later escaping from prison, he’s dead-set on revenge. Malden, now a sheriff, won’t let that happen, though his motivations, along with those of deputy Slim Pickens, are questionable beyond that. Katy Jurado plays his new wife and the beautiful Pilar Pellicer is his stepdaughter. The love story between Pellicer and Brando comes out of nowhere and there is no chemistry whatsoever, but the beach setting is both gorgeous and unusual in a Western.
Oscar Nomination: Best Cinematography, Color
Ugh, this film took me forever and more than one watching to get through. My lack of interest in the subject was not helped by a poor quality print and the fact that Franchot Tone and Richard Cromwell look a lot alike. Those two men are newcomers to a regiment of British soldiers during the days of the British Raj. One is a cocky, seasoned soldier and the other is a newly commissioned officer and son of the Colonel. Gary Cooper’s job is to guide these new recruits. The story of the three soldiers is familiar and was done much better in other films of the era, Gunga Din, The Four Feathers, and Beau Geste to name a few. 
Oscar Win: Best Assistant Director
Oscar Nominations: Best Picture; Best Director; Best Writing, Screenplay; Best Art Direction; Best Sound, Recording; Best Film Editing