Review of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Okay. Wow. This is a great film. It has fantastic dialogue, fantastic acting and a very thoughtful plot.



Movies that are faithful adaptations of stage plays have a feeling all their own. The focus of the playwright is dialogue while the focus of the screenwriter is action. When play dialogue makes its way onto film, the effect is curious. Cinematography stops mattering as much. Instead of switching scenes every few minutes, it's every twenty or so. Some might even say that the freedom which film affords over the stage is being lost. As long as you lose yourself in the dialogue, it doesn't matter. Dialogue-driven tension has an intensity that is very different from action-driven tension. Shades of emotion, pauses and powerful language can cause gasps just as easily as any car chase.

This is another film with a twist ending. It is to my shame that when the credits rolled, the subtleties of the ending had gone over my head. I didn't understand and I was forced to re-watch. I should mention that it was a complete pleasure to watch a second time. And yes, I "got it" the next time through.

While the actors were great all around, I think the most groovy were the women-folk. Elizabeth Taylor is loveably awful as Martha, the discontent and obnoxious professor's wife who, despite her protests to the contrary, brays. Sandy Dennis, who I had never heard of before this viewing, surprised me with her performance, starting out little and mousy and becoming loud, drunk and hilarious, especially when she claps her hands in glee, shouting, "Violence! Violence!"

It's truly a movie that approaches perfection for what it is. It achieves its every goal and has absolutely no down side.
18 immoderately consumed alcoholic beverages out of 20

Review of Unforgiven

I first saw Unforgiven when I was a fifteen. At that age, as many readers can confirm, certain things go over your head. The moral ambiguities were lost on me and the action seemed boring. I'm glad I had a chance to see it as an adult.



One of the great things about this movie that defies the Western genre is its realistic depiction of killing. Without giving much away, I'll say that certain characters have problems with the act of pulling the trigger and its aftermath. Unlike many of its Western sisters, Unforgiven goes to great lengths to show that it takes a special kind of hombre to kill a man and be okay with it. Much of the action deals with the characters coming to grips with the reality of death.

Unforgiven also pulls yet another great genre-buster: heroism is nowhere to be found. And unlike certain other Westerns on AFI's list, for example (glorious fanfare of bum-music) The Wild Bunch, the characters are still likeable. William Munny (Clint Eastwood) and his escort are assassins lurking on the fringes of a quiet small town to murder two men who probably don't deserve it. Yet we like and identify with them. Heroism is particularily absent when killing is afoot. The shootouts are unhappy affairs that involve a lot of misery and running away.

If this show has a down side, it's probably Clint Eastwood's stilted acting during some of the early scenes where he is conflicted about the impending assassinations. Or perhaps it's some on-the-nose writing in those scenes. Or a combination of both. Regardless, when William Munny leaves this phase and hardens, Eastwood's acting also improves when he enters familiar dramatic territory and gets lots of chances to deliver his characteristic icy squints.

Something about the ending doesn't seem quite right to me either. Perhaps I missed the important philosophical message, but it lacks a coda wherein we see how the characters lives are affected by the story. Instead we are treated to a some scrolling captions which hint at a coda but answer few questions. This violates the old rule, "Show, don't tell". I won't go into more detail for fear of spoilers.

It's a complicated movie that has something for action-craving Western fans and intellectuals. However, the sudden ending keeps it from being perfect.
4 shots left in the Spencer Rifle out of 5

Review of Tootsie

It's the simple tale of a man who falls in love with a woman while he's impersonating a woman. And she thinks he's a lesbian. And he attracts every old man he meets. And his current girlfriend begins to suspect that he's gay. Okay, maybe it's not that simple.



Cross-dressing stories are familiar to us all. They were well-trodden territory for writers in the English Renaissance and thereafter. They were probably popular before too, but I wouldn't know because I haven't investigated. What Tootsie has to offer that was not-so-familiar in 1982 was the added complication of sexual-orientation ambiguity. When starving actor Michael Dorsey cross-dresses to get a female part on a soap opera, it is purely for monetary reasons. He finds himself in a variety of sexually uncomfortable mixups.

It's pretty funny. The dialogue is well-written. Perhaps it's not a masterpiece of American cinema as the AFI claims, but it's still worth watching.

It just wouldn't be a review by me if I didn't mention something about the music, would it? See, in Tootsie there's this song called, "It Might Be You" that pops up during a montage and the credits. It's a simple number with male voice (Stephen Bishop) and electric piano. It's also awful. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that this piece a' shit was nominated for Best Original Song in the Academy Awards and spent eight weeks in the Top 40.

I'd like to go on a rant about the 80's and the strange cultural warping of taste that occurred. What were we thinking, honestly? Why did we think those primitive synthesizers and electric pianos sounded cool? Sadly, this digression must be ranted another time because I have not thought it through fully.

So, funny movie, funny characters, funny dialogue, miserable music.
4 deadpan Bill Murry lines out of 5