evanston_dad

Film noir gave movie audiences throughout the 1950s a nice antidote to the mind-numbingly banal and nonexistent-in-reality version of the American Dream that was being forced on them by popular culture. But most of those movies existed on the fringe and weren't taken seriously enough to be a threat. However, there was a wave of mainstream studio fare that did its own critical takedown of the American lifestyle and suggested that hard work and devotion to god and country wasn't enough to make everyone happy. I'm thinking of movies like "The Man with the Golden Arm," "The Bachelor Party," and many of Douglas Sirk's movies, which looked like 1950s sugary concoctions but had bitter centers. "A Hatful of Rain" is another one of those. For every couple living in pristine suburbia, loving their cars and pearls and stuffy martini parties, there was a couple like the one in this film, struggling to make it, living in shabby urban apartments, and in this case struggling with addiction brought on by injuries sustained in the Korean War.

I give these movies a lot of credit for being as stark as they are, even if they seem sanitized to modern-day audiences. Just the suggestion that veterans were treated badly, or at least indifferently, by their country was pretty bold at a time when John Wayne and his antiquated version of masculine, patriotic, and conservative America was the standard bearer for many people.

"A Hatful of Rain" was adapted from a play and it shows. It's rare to find a stage-to-film adaptation that can fully shed its origins, but this one tries. Don Murray plays the heroin addict, Eva Marie Saint, one of the loveliest actresses from this time period, plays his wife, Lloyd Nolan is the overbearing and insufferable dad who's got everything wrong, and Anthony Franciosa is the put-upon-brother who spends all of his time trying to keep Murray functional. Franciosa was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award, the only one of his career, for what feels like more of a supporting performance.

Directed with characteristic grit and minimum of sentimentality by Fred Zinneman.

Grade: A-

I was watching something on T. V. one day and came across a commercial starring Ryan Reynolds. I was struck by how OLD he looked in it. Not bad, just old, compared to the Ryan Reynolds who started his career on "Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place." Ryan is around my age; in fact, he might even be a little younger. I turned to my wife and asked, "God, do WE look that old?" The answer is probably "yes," but the difference is that my wife and I don't have constant reminders of what our younger selves looked like thrown in our faces every day. At the very same time that the Ryan Reynolds commercial was airing, "Blade: Trinity" was on a different station.

That experience got me thinking a lot about how movies and the actors in them capture moments in time and make possible a weird kind of time travel. You can watch Nicole Kidman in "Far and Away" and then immediately hop over to "Babygirl" and literally see the passage of years in her face.

This is just one of the ideas explored in "Close Your Eyes," an evocative slow burn of a movie about aging in general, and aging as an artist specifically. Manolo Solo is my pick for best actor of the year for his performance as Miguel Garay, a former movie director and author who is trying to track down his friend Julio Arenas, an actor who starred in one of Garay's films but disappeared without a trace before the film could be finished. The film turns into a kind of quiet detective story as Garay tracks Julio down through mutual acquaintances, clues left behind, etc. The film is as much about Garay's own psychology as it is about what happened to Julio. Actually, the film is about lots of things, but it's not obviously about any one thing. It's a lot about coming to terms with getting older and saying goodbye to things that you won't ever have again, something that resonates with me very much right now in my life, having just turned 50. But it's not a downer. It's as much about realizing how much there is to enjoy in the later part of life as there is to miss.

You've gotta have patience with this one, as it's slow and ruminative. It's like reading a character-driven novel. It also happens to be one of the best movies released in 2024.

Grade: A.

I had never heard of "The Woman on Pier 13." I HAD, however, heard of "I Married a Communist." Wasn't I surprised, then, when Eddie Muller, introducing this film on TCM, let me know that this movie IS "I Married a Communist," or rather was until it bombed and was re-released later under a different title.

This movie is one big ball of hyperventilating anti-communist propaganda, which is a fascinating genre of movies given what was happening in American culture at the time. Robert Ryan fans should be satisfied, as Ryan does his thing and does it well. Laraine Day is kind of wasted in a wimpy 1950s housewife role for most of the movie until she grows a pair and gets to take part in the action late in the film.

This movie is better than its Internet ratings would suggest.

And is this directed by Robert Stevenson, Academy Award nominated director of "Mary Poppins"? Why yes it is.

Grade: B+