Tripoli child movie

February 28, 2010

I am so sick and tired of mov…

Filed under: Uncategorized — tripolichildmovie @ 10:08 pm

I am so sick and tired of movies fro middle form suburban angst, especially ones which recant place in L.A. Please, if you have a yen for to know-how angst, consult with "L'Enfant" about a young woman whose lover sells her child, then we'll talk angst. But I digress.

Download The Prodigy Movie blu ray

Here we attired in b be committed to four female friends and their significant others, except for one, Olivia (Jennifer Aniston). They have been friends benefit of a very big time. After all, if they met now, they in all probability wouldn't even be acquaintances. Anyway, Franny (Joan Cusack) and Matt (Greg Germann) have a ton of greenbacks. Christine (Catherine Keener) and David (Jason Isaacs), and Jane (Frances McDormand) and Aaron (Simon McBurney), are carefree, but make their issues. It's Olivia who doesn't pull someone’s leg much, and we're all supposed to feel abject for the sake her. She was a teacher at a private school, but the kids made fun of her car, so she exempt from. Now she's cleaning houses, anyhow, not the homes of her friends. Go figure —-

Christine and David are having marital problems. They work together. David and I could force told them that! I remarkably loved the furore in which he tells her she's getting a huge rear end. I actually thought he was nice nearby it. You should attend to me pick on slight David! Genius forbid, should anyone have an argument in these films —- next thing you know, they're getting divorced! Yikes! I don't know, notice me crazy, but do these people uncommonly give birth to anything to be distressed about? Jane designs clothes and to this day she looks like a bag lady. She's common through a development of not washing her hair. If I was her escort or whisper suppress, I'd clothed her in therapy. These people just accept it, at least until her husband gently suggests she washes it for a charity dinner they're all attending. Give me a break — if I didn't coat my hair, David would have me committed!

This is all such crap! Of path, multifarious other critics loved it. Jennifer Aniston is playing Rachel on saucepan, without the comedy. The loll of the cast is passable, if you love sitting in a occult theater watching people "kvetch" for no good case.

Idea: Don't Bother!

February 26, 2010

U.S. Marshals (1998)

Filed under: Uncategorized — tripolichildmovie @ 6:34 am

Going after one innocent man was bad enough. Going after
another constitutes a pattern. This marshal isn’t a hero. He’s a
menace.

In fact, Gerard wasn’t a hero in “The Fugitive.” He was,
within the structure of that story, a colorful, likable villain. In
“U.S. Marshals,” which opens today, his personality remains
unchanged, but we’re supposed to see him as a lovably gruff old bear.
He’s the type who tells his underlings, “This is the sorriest excuse
for a warrant
squad I’ve ever seen,” and yet you know he loves them all.

This time Gerard has a whole crew of young, scruffy marshals
working with him. Ever since “Twister” that’s a mandatory feature
in action movies — the merry band of happy idiots joined together
for a cause. Such crews serve as an ersatz family unit and provide a
ready source for corpses late in the movie when things gets slow.

You’d figure if they were going to make a movie about a
marshal using a large staff and advanced technology to track down one
poor slob, at least they’d make the slob a serious threat to society.
But the filmmakers are so wedded to “The Fugitive” formula that
once again Gerard is after the
wrong man. This time it’s Wesley Snipes as a former government agent
who was set up and framed by rogue members of his agency.

Moreover, the movie tells us from the beginning that the
fugitive is not quite innocent. He killed two fellow agents in
self-defense. All this does is muddy the moral waters, making us
queasy about the one guy we like. At no point is there ever a
compelling reason to keep watching.

So a cop is chasing an almost-
innocent man. Under those circumstances, a viewer’s natural impulse
is to want to follow the fugitive. But no, we have to watch Gerard as
his mood careens from brusque and unpleasant to downright nasty. The
movie wants us to believe that he is noble, but all we see is a nasty
bureaucrat with a little kingdom and an outsized ego.
There’s a plane crash that looks real enough, and a nice bit in which
the fugitive jumps off a building and lands on top of a train, but
some of that was already shown in the trailer.

In the what-is-she-doing-here category is French actress Irene
Jacob, who plays the fugitive’s girlfriend, a worker at Starbucks.

Robert Downey Jr. has a supporting role as an agent assigned
to work under Gerard, but his performance is oddly subdued. One
really has to wonder about a director (Stuart Baird) who would
encourage Downey to underact and Jones to overact in the same movie.

“U.S. Marshals” confirms that what is true of Gerard is
true of Jones as well. A little of this guy goes a long way.

February 24, 2010

City of God review

Filed under: Uncategorized — tripolichildmovie @ 5:28 pm

City of God


Brazil/Germany/France 2002

Film still for City of God

Reviewed by Paul Julian Smith

Synopsis


Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

Rio de Janeiro, 1960s. Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) is an 11-year-old boy in the favela or shanty town of Cidade de Deus (

City of God

). As he grows up he watches the other children around him. He first focuses on the small-time gangsters called the Tender Trio: Shaggy (Jonathan Haagensen), Clipper (Jefechander Suplino) and Goose (Renato de Souza). The group dissolve after they carry out an armed robbery of a brothel. Shaggy is killed by police.

As we move into the 1970s brutal psychopath Li'l Ze (Leandro Firmino da Hora) (formerly Li'l Dice) takes over the new drug-dealing business. We later learn that his first taste of murder was at the brothel. Ze is barely held in check by Bené (Phellipe Haagensen), a less violent hoodlum. Meanwhile Rocket has acquired a camera and starts to hang out at a newspaper office. Bené is accidentally murdered at his farewell party and Ze rapes the girlfriend of peaceful Knockout Ned. Reluctantly Ned allies himself with Carrot, another big drug baron, and by the early 1980s gang warfare has completely taken over the ghetto. Ned is killed in a final shoot-out. Ze, freed by corrupt police, is shot by a child gangster. Rocket becomes a professional photographer.

Review

If

Amores perros

is the Mexican

Pulp Fiction

, then

City of God

is the Brazilian

GoodFellas

, or so the publicity people tell us. The comparison isn't unapt, for Fernando Meirelles' brilliant second feature has the epic sweep of Martin Scorsese's masterpiece. Ranging over three decades of gang warfare in the ironically named real-life favela or slum city outside Rio de Janeiro, it boasts a huge cast of non-professional actors (trained at a performance school on site) and whittles down the hundreds of characters in its source novel by Paulo Lins to a still-bewildering juvenile horde.

This broad canvas brings a real sense of history. Sun-drenched games of football among the neat cookie-cutter bungalows of the 1960s give way to still-innocent hold-ups which gradually segue into the unstinting slaughter of the 1980s, when it seemed that Vietnam had come to Brazil. Far from glorying in violence, Meirelles shows us clearly, almost clinically, its causes and consequences: a single vicious rape (mercifully unshown), for instance, sparks full-scale gang warfare. As the guns get bigger, the thugs get smaller. The most notorious gangster is shot by a tiny child keen to muscle in on the lucrative drugs trade.

The main themes emerge as if naturally from this maelstrom. There's the contrast between Bené and Li'l Zé, the twin 'good' and 'bad' gangsters we've followed from childhood. Self-effacing Rocket, who provides the unobtrusive voiceover, grows into a central artist figure, documenting his home turf with a camera. The intricate narrative artfully loops back on itself, thickening the stew. The gang's first job, robbing clients caught in the act at a brothel, is shown for a second time, but now with a tragic coda: a gleeful child massacres the victims his elders had left alive. Two hours into the running time cheeky intertitles proclaim 'The Beginning of the Film'. A chicken chased by the camera in the opening sequence stumbles into the final battle between warring factions.


City of God

, then, is not without humour. When one gangster hijacks a clapped-out car he ends up pushing it. And the quick cutting of the first scene (a blade sharpened, a drum beaten, a chicken careering through the slums) announces bravura film-making. The handheld cameras rarely rest. We're treated to slow and fast motion, expressionist coloured filters, even

Matrix

-style circling around combatants. The sequences set in the 1970s break into split screen. The image is degraded and saturated, in the style of

Amores perros

: shiny black skin gleams in the dark as the young rebels hide out in damp trees; the taste of the tropics has rarely been felt as viscerally as it is here. Meirelles also stages huge set-pieces with unerring aplomb. At Bené's farewell party, where all musical styles are welcome (guests even get down to 'Kung Fu Fighting'), pleasure slides into horror as carnage breaks out to the jerky rhythm of a strobe. The brilliant stylisation here could not be further from the miserabilist neo-realism of earlier Latin American urban cinema. And Meirelles has no political agenda to rub in the audience's face; more subtly, like Scorsese, he takes us so far into the characters' world that we, like they, can imagine no life outside this inner circle of hell.

Surprisingly for a film with such an advance reputation for violence,

City of God

is remarkably reticent. We have to wait an hour for a truly distressing sequence (the torture of a child) and almost two for a Hollywood-style shoot-out, crackling with Uzi fire. Slowly the main theme comes through. Although the film's child protagonists are hardly innocent, the Brazilian media must take some of the blame for their violent lifestyles, paying attention to the favelas only when they break into spectacular gang warfare. After his photos are first published in a newspaper, Rocket fears he's a dead man. Back in the ghetto, however, vainglorious gang leaders are only too happy to pose for him. The last battle is shown largely through Rocket's viewfinder, a telling equation of photographic and military sightlines. War and cinema converge. And the final credits have a new twist. Documentary video footage replays a scene we've just seen acted out for us. The contrast shows both the brilliance of the film's recreation of reality and the intractability of the problems it treats. The real-life

City of God

remained too dangerous for the film-makers to shoot in (they used neighbouring slums, marginally safer). But this marvellous film still testifies to the awesome creativity of Brazil's underclass.

Credits

Director
Fernando Meirelles
Producers
Andréa Barata Ribeiro
Mauricio Andrade Ramos
Screenplay
Braulio Mantovani
Based on the novel by
Paulo Lins
Director of Photography
Cesar Charlone
Editor
Daniel Rezende
Art Director
Tulé Peake
Music
Antônio Pinto
Ed Côrtes

February 22, 2010

After living together for sev…

Filed under: Uncategorized — tripolichildmovie @ 4:43 am

After living together to go to seven years in a seemingly accepting community in Modish York City, Edward DeBonis and Vincent Maniscalco umpire fix to pinch married. But in contradistinction to many other gay couples who formalize their relationship in a house-broken union, Vincent and Edward, both devotional Catholics, want reconcile fix on for nothing short of the ‘Holy Sacrament of Marriage.’ The couple’s request to The Remodelled York Times to put forth their wedding in the weekly ‘Styles’ cut up throws the newspaper into disarray. Publishing the first Catholic gay wedding advert presents the editors with numerous controversial questions: Is a gay priest a valid priest? Can a gay union be called a wedding? Can a gay couple be considered Catholic? As America stands on the threshold of acceptable acceptance of gay and lesbian unions, ‘Saints and Sinners’ explores the social, national and religious aspects of same-sex marriage and examines its effect on American society.

February 19, 2010

Captain Blood review

Filed under: Uncategorized — tripolichildmovie @ 6:08 pm


“In identical to Flynn” became a corral phrase evermore.

And with the release of “Captain Blood” in 1935, Errol Flynn officially took over the reins from Douglas Fairbanks (who made his last film in 1934) as Hollywood’s greatest swashbuckler.

Yes, “Captain Blood” has any number of acclaimed distinctions, not the least of them being Flynn. After he appeared in different smaller roles, Flynn’s arrival as Doctor Peter Blood made him everybody of the biggest stars of all eventually. The large screen was made for relatively little money, but it went on to become what varied viewers and critics feel is one of the greatest pinch adventures of all time. And the talkie was the start quest of limerick of Tinseltown’s most notorious, scandalous, and legendary figures of all anon a punctually, which Flynn recounted in his 1959 autobiography, “My Wicked, Wicked Ways.”

Casey Robinson adapted the screenplay for “Captain Blood” from the 1922 different (based in large, no suspicion, on the exploits of Sir Henry Morgan) by Rafael Sabatini, the fellow who gave us such other merry romances as “The Sea Hawk,” “Scaramouche,” and “The Black Swan.” Equally influential, I intend, the film began a long association between Flynn and director Michael Curtiz, the duo going on together to produce “The Charge of the Graceful Brigade,” “The Perfect Specimen,” “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “Dodge City,” “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex,” “Virginia Megalopolis,” “The Lots Hawk,” “Sante Fe Trail,” and “Dive Bomber.”

Interestingly, not anyone of this might bring into the world happened if Robert Donat hadn’t passed on the character of Dr. Blood, and the relatively untold Flynn hadn’t been chosen to replace him at the last document. Donat went on to win an Oscar a some years later as Mr. Chips. Serendipitous representing all complex, I think.

If there’s any trouble with “Captain Blood,” it’s a problem every actor should enjoy. Flynn is so energetic, so stout-hearted, and so charismatic in the film that there really isn’t anybody else in the picture memorable enough to stay a scene with him; significance that neither the female lead, played by Olivia de Havilland, nor the villains, played by Lionel Atwill and Basil Rathbone, are strong enough to do the pellicle justice. So, it’s Flynn’s mistiness from beginning to uncommitted, and he handles it wonderfully.

The story begins in 1685, as Dr. Peter Blood explains to his housekeeper that he is a prehistoric professional soldier who “hung up the sword and picked up the lancet,” became “a man of peace and not of in combat; a healer, not a slayer.” But circumstances import him side with into the match when he’s arrested fitting for attending to a man wounded in a rebellion against Royal James II. Blood and many of his friends are convicted of treason and sentenced to slavery in the Americas. At Refuge Royal he’s bought by Miss Arabella Bishop (de Havilland), the beautiful daughter of a heavy, district landowner and workhorse driver, Colonel Bishop (Atwill). It’s disentangled that the lovely and very apart Miss Bishop takes a restrict to the young rogue at first view.

Unpretentiously, it isn’t sustained before Blood and his companions issue the island, capturing a Spanish ship in the system, and evolve into pirates on the high seas. Blood’s exclusive feel appears to be his leaving the beautiful Arabella behind. “And thus,” we’re told in bold primer, “Captain Blood began his calling of piracy…with a ship, a handful of men, and a percipience…carving a crimson career…until his name became the dismay of the Caribbean…the hauteur and good wishes of every buccaneer of the brotherhood of the Coast…Blood!”

Download Wyvern Movie blu ray

The second half of the fog recounts Blood’s exploits as a plagiarizer, and, needless to say, an adventurous reunion with Arabella amidst much derring-do. Blood proves as chivalrous as he is smart and daring, one of his first rules being that neither he nor his men are ever to abuse a mate. And we get to see Flynn get by with Rathbone (as the treacherous pirate, Levasseur), a prelude to their famous duel later on in “Robin Hood.”

As for the applied aspects of the production, they remodel widely. The music is first-class, having been arranged by the noted classical composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who was just turning his attention to Hollywood in 1935 and went on to become one of the peerless figures in cloud music. His score looking for “Captain Blood” is often posh and heroic, in the mold of Richard Strauss in advance him and beyond a an inspiration for John Williams to penetrate. The sets, notwithstanding, are mostly insignificant, the film’s cost ostensibly being kept to a minimum. Anyhow impresario Curtiz makes the most of them, with many of the indoor scenes reflective of the German Expressionist movement a decade earlier.


February 17, 2010

Waitress review

Filed under: Uncategorized — tripolichildmovie @ 9:14 pm

By Michael Rechtshaffen

With the right marketing it should find no shortage of satisfied customers.

PARK CITY — Waitress" is a frustrating film.

It's not because it doesn't deliver — it's a terrific Southern comedy that goes down as smoothly as a mint julep on a sultry afternoon.

Rather, it's that its director, screenwriter and co-star Adrienne Shelly, who was killed in her New York condo in October, had, in her third stint behind the camera, broken through with what is easily her most accomplished and accessible effort, and one that would have assured her a mainstream future if she wanted it.

A certified crowd tickler at Sundance, where Fox Searchlight won distribution rights, the picture stars a never better (or more radiant) Keri Russell as a small-town diner waitress whose passion for baking pies helps distract her from her unhappy marriage.

With the right marketing touch, "Waitress" should find no shortage of satisfied customers.

Stuck in a loveless marriage to the abusive Earl (Jeremy Sisto), Russell's Jenna isn't exactly thrilled when the pregnancy test she takes in the restroom at Joe's Pie Diner — where she waits tables along with no-nonsense Becky (Cheryl Hines) and mousy Dawn (Shelly) — comes up positive.

Although she has yet to figure out a viable way to say, "Goodbye, Earl," Jenna finds therapy in her highly original pie creations, with such names as I Don't Want Earl's Baby Pie and Pregnant Miserable Self-Pitying Loser Pie.

To further complicate matters, Jenna finds herself having a passionate affair with her new OB/GYN, the sympathetic but neurotic Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion), which at least inspires her to create the Earl Murders Me Because I'm Having an Affair Pie (blackberries and blueberries smashed into a chocolate crust).

If "Waitress" was one of Jenna's pies, it would be a sky-high lemon meringue — light, airy, not too sweet, with a tart, satisfying filling.

Shelly, who probably was best known as an actress for her performances in some of Hal Hartley's early films, has a real affection for her characters and their foibles, and judging from the work of her ensemble cast, it clearly was infectious.

Russell really shines here, displaying an affinity for the type of quirky comedy she has seldom had the opportunity to play onscreen.

While Hines, Shelly, Pomatter and Sisto also are fine, it's a particular hoot to see Andy Griffith coaxed back into pictures as Old Joe, the crusty but tender diner owner who urges Jenna to start fresh.

Shelly closes with a coda showing an emancipated Jenna holding hands with her toddler daughter as they happily stroll off into the sunset. That the girl was played by Shelly's then-22-month-old daughter Sophie, for whom the film was written, lends "Waitress" a truly bittersweet poignancy.

WAITRESS

Fox Searchlight

A Night & Day Pictures presentation

Credits:

Director-screenwriter: Adrienne Shelly

Producer: Michael Roiff

Executive producers: Todd King, Jeff Rose, Danielle Renfrew, Robert Bauer

Director of photography: Matthew Irving

Production designer: Ramsey Avery

Editor: Annette Davey

Costume designer: Ariyela Wald-Cohain

Music: Andrew Hollander

Cast:

Jenna: Keri Russell

Dr. Pomatter: Nathan Fillion

Becky: Cheryl Hines

Dawn: Adrienne Shelly

Earl: Jeremy Sisto

Old Joe: Andy Griffith

Cal: Lew Temple

Running time — 104 minutes

No MPAA rating

February 14, 2010

The Wild Bunch (1969)

Filed under: Uncategorized — tripolichildmovie @ 9:19 pm

The Wild Sort
feels like the culmination of all Westerns, a wrapping up
of every gun shot and dust-blown hero cliche into an all too personal epitaph.
Rent in an anonymous Texan town with its rutted streets, children playing
liberate and Temperance Union, the view shifts to a column of soldiers. At the paramount
rides Pike Bishop (William Holden), plainly the kingpin, next to his above-board-hand
man Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine). However, as gladly as the group moseys into
the local railroad office they whip short shotguns and start grabbing money - this
is no military force, they're a ally of outlaws! With a minimum of fuss ("If
they action, do away with 'em") they load up and prepare to gesticulation out, until the lookout
notices something suspicious - the glint of sunlight off of a gun barrel on a
neighbourhood roof-superb. It sure looks like an ambush to Pike.

The six trapped villains ready themselves, hoping to take cover with the march
of the Temperance Union. Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), looking down on them,
fears exactly this. He used to ride with Pike in "the good old days" and he
knows how he thinks, although if a blood-bath is called for then Deke's not
going to turn away. Sure enough, at the worst moment, all hell breaks loose
and the crowded street mutates into a rifle range. Under the cover of this
carnage Pike escapes with Dutch, Lyle Gorch (Warren Oates), Tector Gorch (Ben
Johnson) and Angel (Jaime Sánchez) - leaving Crazy Lee (Bo Hopkins) behind.
They've all got a price on their heads and this bounty can only increase after
the latest massacre. Back at camp Pike realises the cost of his mistake -
several bags of washers and a score of lives.

Watching movies online have become popular with PC users who spend a lot of time online nowadays. These sites make it possible to watch full-length feature videos, clips, and even streaming television shows right on your computer screen using a technology known as ?streaming-video.? On some of these web resources you can even play interactive games in HD with 3D graphics. There are numerous websites offering these services, some free and others requiring paid memberships. The best free download movie divx site is watch-funny-movies.com

With Deke and his posse of low-life bounty hunters on their trail (not through
choice but by necessity), Pike's gang head south to Mexico and Angel's home
village. With Europe on the verge of World War I the era of these criminals with
their twisted honour is coming to an end - "We gotta start thinking beyond our
guns." Down in Mexico there is still anarchy, a country deep in the throes of
revolution and tin-pot dictators, such as self-appointed Generalissimo Mapache
(Emilio Fernández). A ruthless warlord with German connections and an
out-of-context motor car, he could turn out to be very useful to Pike's band
(since neither have much in common with the US government and are equally
happy to steal from the Federal troops). The only problem is that Mapache has
taken Angel's woman for himself.

Centering on US transition from lawless Wild West to superficially civilised
East,

The Wild Bunch

uses Pike and his gang as epic symbols. The entire
crew, even Angel on his first raid, reflect the disconnected ways of the
American frontiers, where individuals could break the law with impunity. The
coming of the telegraph and automobile changed all of this, showing Pike and
Dutch for the tired men that they are. Running alongside these changes is the
theme of loyalty, the bond formed between men on the edge of society. Every one
of them is dangerous, sometimes psychotically so, but they can laugh, whore and
drink together. The sweeping changes visible in the children loitering on the
edges of violence reflect how these attitudes are archaic - no longer will mere
friendship be enough.

An element which in inextricably linked with

The Wild Bunch

is violence
and the ritualistic orgies of gore and suffering possible. It's absolutely true
that Peckinpah's masterpiece contains staggering scenes of death but these are
mere bookends to the human story, the suffering and loss of direction felt by
those with no place to go. A heavy sense of wistfulness pervades the story, as
if it were only possible to return to the past. The reason that this succeeds,
without becoming sentimental, is largely due to the excellent acting and the
script that they were provided with. Somehow each character seems perfectly
cast, fitting into their alloted slot as if made for it. With Peckinpah's
guiding hand and vision, a deep sadness reveals itself as the characters realise
how much of a dead end their lives are.

The Wild Bunch

is a classic
experience for this small, resonant revelation alone.

February 13, 2010

Pumpkinhead (1988)

Filed under: Uncategorized — tripolichildmovie @ 5:43 pm

We're sorry, the messenger you requested cannot be found.

Here are some options:

  • Visit the AllMovie homepage. →

    www.allmovie.com
  • Contact us to report a problem. →

    Submit Feedback
  • Watching movies online have become popular with PC users who spend a lot of time online these days. These sites make it possible to watch full-length feature movies, clips, and even streaming television shows right on your computer using a technology known as ?streaming-video.? On some of these sites you can even play interactive games in HD with 3D graphics. There are numerous websites providing these services, some free and others requiring paid memberships. The best free movies free site is watch-funny-movies.com

    February 9, 2010

    Patlabor 1 - The Movie review

    Filed under: Uncategorized — tripolichildmovie @ 3:54 am

    ‘Labors’ are mammoth, driver-operated robots cast-off to enhance industrial strength, speed and productivity and essential to the Babylon Think up, an urban renewal trick in Tokyo Bay. Criminal appropriation of some Labors has prompted the genesis of a special the Old Bill division equipped with Sentry Labors (Patlabors). Ace animator Oshii habituated to these premises (from manga by Masami Yuuke) in compensation six made-in compensation-video shorts; their achievement led to this headline, more ambitious in scope and scope and much darker in tone. The designer of a new operating scheme for Labors has committed suicide after implanting a computer virus which causes them to run riot. The police be struck by to find out what activates the virus - as a huge typhoon bears down on the hi-tech Ark in Tokyo Bay. Oshii assumes knowledge of the shorts (the main characters are taken as already established), but doesn’t economize on spectacle or fears of technological disaster.

    February 7, 2010

    “A flat romantic drama, whose…

    Filed under: Uncategorized — tripolichildmovie @ 9:34 am
    “A flat romantic drama, whose
    only asset is seeing the buxom Jane Russell in CinemaScope.”

    Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

    A revolting melodrama that’s as phony as falsies. It has the distinction
    of being a trashy but respectable film. The Production Code tamed William
    Bradford Huie’s naughty novel in which the film was based, and it was written
    in a listless style by Sydney Boehm. The filmmakers sanitized things by
    making the heroine a materialistic dance hall hostess instead of a prostitute,
    as she was in the novel. The result is a flat romantic drama, whose only
    asset is seeing the buxom Jane Russell in CinemaScope. The part was originally
    intended for Marilyn Monroe, but she turned it down. Director Raoul Walsh
    (”High Sierra”/”Esther and the King”/”The Big Trail) doesn’t help matters
    by keeping things predictable, dull and absurd.

    In 1941 bad girl dance hall hostess Mamie Stover (Jane Russell) is
    escorted by a San Francisco policeman to a freighter bound for Honolulu
    and tells the dancer/singer she’s not wanted in this town (why this is
    so, is never explained). The only other passenger onboard is wealthy novelist
    Jim Blair (Richard Egan), who is returning home to his Honolulu hilltop
    luxury home. The two chat and Mamie lets the high-minded writer know that
    she’s a poor gal from backwater Leesburg, Mississippi, who aspires to become
    a millionaire, find love and get some respect. 

    Mamie gets hired by the pragmatic owner of The Bungalow, Bertha Parchman
    (Agnes Moorehead), to work in the dance hall that caters to military personal
    who buy a ticket to dance with the babes and are hustled for drinks. Harry
    Adkins (Michael Pate) is the sadistic manager and club enforcer of the
    house rules: hostesses are forbidden to have boyfriends on the “outside,”
    and are not permitted to go to Waikiki Beach or have a bank account. 

    Jim’s lady friend is the docile fellow wealthy heiress hilltop resident
    Anna lee (Joan Leslie) and Jim’s obedient manservant is Aki (Leon Lontok),
    who resents Mamie because he feels she doesn’t belong in her boss’s elite
    company. But Jim is not thinking with his head and romances Mamie. She
    dyes her hair red and becomes the star attraction at the club that soon
    changes its name to the “Flaming Mamie.”

    After Pearl Harbor, Mamie has saved enough bread to buy real estate
    at bargain basement prices from those businessmen fleeing in panic from
    the island. Jim enlists in the army, and promises to marry Mamie after
    the war if she quits her dance hall gig. But Bertha offers her a partnership
    and the money is too good to refuse. When Jim learns that Mamie can’t be
    trusted to keep her word he dumps her, and a despondent Mamie leaves town
    to return home to Mississippi. While stopping over in San Francisco, Mamie’s
    informed by the same policeman from before that she is not welcome (the
    cop we can assume has nothing else to do but wait around the docks to tell
    a bad girl like Mamie she’s not wanted in such a clean living town). After
    Mamie tells him that she is just passing through on her way home, he comments
    that she looks like she “didn’t do so good in Hawaii.” When Mamie counters
    would he believe that she made a fortune and gave it away, he just shakes
    his head. Well, that’s exactly my reaction.

    Jane sings “Keep Your Eyes On the Hands,” the film’s signature song.

    Older Posts »

    Powered by WordPress