Exciting old-style action-adventure movie with a lingering message (9/10)

As I was growing up in middle class America in the 1950s and 1960s, I got to see plenty of movies. We lived in Overland Park, Kansas, a post-WW2 suburb of the Kansas City metro area. The little town was something out of a Norman Rockwell painting or a Jean Shepherd—author behind the movie, A Christmas Story—reminiscence.

Written by Charles Leavitt
Directed by Edward Zwick

Leonardo DiCaprio … Danny Archer
Djimon Hounsou … Solomon Vandy
Jennifer Connelly … Maddy Bowen

The small downtown included TG&Y (dime store), two drug stores (a Rexall outlet and locally owned “McDaniels”), A&P Groceries, a Sears catalog-order store, an A&W Root Beer franchise, a couple of restaurants, etc… and the Overland Park Theater. When we were just kids, Mom and Pop would shuttle my brother and me to the matinees on Saturday.

I suppose then they went shopping or something—wink, wink—but we never thought to ask. When you’re a child of nine or even nineteen: the universe revolves around you and your parents do not have lives apart from seeing to your every need or whim. Anyway, sorry to get off track. Continue reading →

Inimitable, retro romantic comic-drama ___ 8/10
Review by Brian Wright

Terry McKay: Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories. And we’ve already missed the spring.

The famous quotation. But what is the context? Trying to reconstruct: it does take place in a dialog sequence between Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) and Nick Ferrante (Cary Grant) aboard ship (a transoceanic cruise destined for New York)… and moves the plot along. By this time—following a significant side trip to an island where they visit Nick’s grandmother (Cathleen Nesbitt)—they have fallen in love. I’m pretty sure Terry is expressing her melancholy that, in the words of the song, “it’s sad to belong to someone else when the right one comes along.” Continue reading →