Aloha

Aloha (Cameron Crowe, 2015)

A celebrated military contractor returns to the site of his greatest career triumphs and reconnects with a long-ago love while unexpectedly falling for the hard-charging Air Force watch-dog assigned to him.

The setting : Hawaii. The cast : Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, John Krasinski, Bill Murray, Alec Baldwin. The director : Cameron Crowe. Well, what could possibly go wrong? As much as a new Cameron Crowe film makes us wish for a return into his top form of his Almost Famous days or just his Say Anything inspiration, it would be something very very nice.

The Seven Year Itch

The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder, 1955)

This romantic comedy staring Marylin Monroe and Tom Ewell became one of the most iconic moments of Monroe’s career. The famous white dress blowing over the subway trap that unveils her legs to the audience and the male main character.

Her

Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)

In a near future, a man has a hard time dealing with his divorce. He is mopey and lonely. He gets an operating system with a female voice and slowly enters in a relationship with her.

The Shop Around the Corner

The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940)

Two employees of a Budapest shop can’t stand each other but they are secretly falling in love as anonymous correspondents.

Silver Linings Playbook

Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell, 2012)

After a stint in a mental institution, former teacher Pat Solitano moves back in with his parents and tries to reconcile with his ex-wife. Things get more challenging when Pat meets Tiffany, a mysterious girl with problems of her own.

Taking more seriously my new years' resolutions brought me to watch most of the films nominated for Best Picture at the 2013 Academy Awards. Having seen the highly praised Django Unchained I had to head for the other nominated movies. Back in 2010, David O. Russell directed The Fighter, a sports movie filled with outstanding performances by Amy Adams, Christian Bale, and Mark Wahlberg. This past year Russell comes back with another solid contender to the Oscars once again filled with memorable performances.

The Apartment

The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)

A man tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.

The appreciation of a movie can change from a person to another, from a director like Billy Wilder who directed his share of notable pictures, one can argue that Some Like it Hot was better than The Apartment or that his crowning achievement is Sunset Blvd. The same can be said about the director himself, the late Andrew Sarris used to lower the income of Wilder into Cinema and might compare him to a John Ford for whom he ranked as a pantheon director. Being an absolute fan of comedies, I cannot pass under the radar the filmography of Wilder. His sardonic, acerbic touch and his unique screenwriting rank him amongst the greats, in my own top.

Angel (1937)

Angel (Ernst Lubitsch, 1937)

Woman and her husband take separate vacations, and she falls in love with another man.

While in Paris, a lady named Mrs. Brown/Mrs. Barker/Angel (Marlene Dietrich) meets a man (Melvyn Douglas) with whom she falls in love. However, back in London she has a husband (Herbert Marshall) that is a diplomat and a workaholic. They barely see each other. But one day at a race track the two men meet and Sir Francis Barker, the husband, invites Anthony Dalton, the secret lover, to stay under his roof. A series of hide and seek events will lead Barker to discover the truth. And at the end, back in Paris, Angel will have to choose between her lover or her husband.

With Marlene Dietrich in the title role and Ernst Lubitsch directing one could expect to have a great and sophisticated entertainment in the kind of the “Lubitsch touch” and the Dietrich legendary presence. But it is mostly an average romantic comedy that doesn’t have the wit and quality of the two stars’ other pictures. Despite a promising opening act, the pairing suffers from a poorly written script and an average cast of supporting characters portrayed by excellent actors. When acquainted to quality films like To Be or Not To Be, The Shop Around the Corner, Ninotchka, and Design For Living from Lubitsch Angel is clearly a letdown and one of his lesser Hollywood films.  

Angel being my last Ernst Lubitsch film on my quest at tackling down the 1000 Greatest Films of All Time by They Shoot Pictures Don’t They, it reminds me how I recently got into his films and now I have seen most of his major work. The list of Pantheon Directors is getting shorter everyday and I still have some films from John Ford, Fritz Lang, Josef Von Sternberg, Max Ophüls, F.W. Murnau, Robert Flaherty, and D.W. Griffith to watch before getting the job done and passing into another slice of the list. Still, so many great films to watch!