Lizabeth Scott has wanted to be rich her whole life. Fortuitously a bag of money practically falls in her lap. Unfortunately various men, including Don DeFore and Dan Duryea, try to get in her way from coming in to her own. A film noir with the femme fatale as the lead, Too Late for Tears has the expected twists and turns but delivers them in unconventional ways.
Somehow the descriptions of Yorgos Lanthimos’s films still aren’t capable of conveying the batshit crazy ride they are set to lead the viewer on. In Alps, Angeliki Papoulia, a Lanthimos regular, is a nurse recruited to join Alps, a group that hires themselves out as living stand-ins for people with recently departed loved ones. All of that might be somewhat of a spoiler as it begins fairly cryptically, but it doesn’t go far in explaining the actual experience of watching the film.
It’s hard to talk about Auntie Mame without comparing it to the musical Mame, particularly the Lucille Ball 1974 movie version. Both stories follow the adventures of Mame Dennis, a single middle aged woman who is suddenly granted the guardianship of her orphaned nephew. After seeing the musical, I expect the character to possess a lot more zaniness than Rosalind Russell brings to the role. The supporting cast also didn’t bring as much to the plate. What does bring a beautiful wackiness to the production is the constant changes over the years in Mame’s apartment and costuming. 
Oscar Nominations: Best Picture; Best Actress in a Leading Role; Best Actress in a Supporting Role; Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White or Color; Best Film Editing
As a lesson to not mess with the supernatural, Blithe Spirit features Rex Harrison as a British author who realizing he needs more material for his next book hires a medium to perform a séance in his home. Unfortunately the séance is too successful and brings forth his dead former wife to haunt him. Despite an unfortunate makeup choice where the ghost looks like the Wicked Witch of the West, the film is witty and amusing, culminating in an end where everyone receives their just desserts.
Oscar Win: Best Effects, Special Effects
James Garner is an extremely charming American dog robber working for a mentally unstable admiral, played by Melvyn Douglas, in World War II London. Julie Andrews is a semi-hardened driver for the military’s motor pool, who has seen too much death in the war already, but is still fascinated by Garner. It is an entertaining oddity to see a World War II film whose main character is an antiwar soldier and whose cowardice is what most attracts the woman who falls in love with him. There is a lot that is told with laughs and absurdity, but it never forgets the seriousness of war.
Oscar Nominations: Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White
With a love triangle as its backdrop, Alexander’s Ragtime Band attempts to tell the early history of jazz during the early parts of the 20th century, all through the music of Irving Berlin. The story is shallow, but the cast is fine, filled with the likes of Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Ethel Merman, Don Ameche and Jack Haley. The music is the best part and the songs are catchy as all get out. Just reading the name of the film gets the title song stuck in my head. 
Oscar Win: Best Music, Scoring
Oscar Nominations: Best Picture; Best Writing, Original Story; Best Art Direction; Best Film Editing; Best Music, Original Song
I was surprised to find a well done film noir from the 1980s, but here it is. After losing her job for refusing to name names, Kelly McGillis finds herself witness to a strange conversation involving a United States senator, played by the amazing Mandy Patinkin, and some mysterious Germans. Being drawn into the conspiracy, she eventually enlists the help of an FBI agent played by Jeff Daniels. Set during the early days of the Cold War, it has a very Hitchcockian feel and involves some captivating twists and turns, culminating in a thrilling climax.
Stupid Oscars compulsion making me watch more Woody Allen films. This one is filled with unlikeable characters: unlikable crazy Spaniards and the extremely unlikable pretentious Americans who invade their country and their lives for the summer. This has Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Chris Messina, and Patricia Clarkson. There are dozens of better films to watch them in.
Oscar Win: Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Edward G. Robinson has two sons: one who is a missing in action Army pilot and the other whom he had hoped would take over the family business but instead wants to move to Chicago with the daughter of Robinson’s former business partner, a man who is serving time in jail for selling defective plane parts. The story twists together in predictable ways, but Robinson is great here as a man who believes strongly that the ends justify the means. Burt Lancaster is his match as the son who has thus far stuck around.
Brooklyn’s Finest is filled with cop clichés: the veteran officer only days from retirement, the undercover cop getting pulled into the crimes he’s supposed to investigate, and the mostly good guy who is sadly forced to go bad by the circumstances of life. Despite the weak story, the cast, including no less than Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, Richard Gere, Lili Taylor, Michael Kenneth Williams, and Wesley Snipes, does its best with the material at hand. The various stories all come together in a terribly contrived climax that attempts to make the whole thing cohesive.