Bringing Up Baby (1938)

You know that I am a sucker for Cary Grant, so I am going to go into this movie with the pre-conception that it will be a good movie.  Boy, was I wrong.  Grant and Katharine Hepburn were amazing in the respective rolls; in fact Hepburn was so spot on with her lines it was a joy to watch. 

Cary Grant is an paleontologist who is trying to get a 1 million dollar grant from a local donor.  During a golf outing with this donor he runs into Hepburn who instantly falls in love with him and begins to do everything to keep his attention on her.  Unfortunately she does not know that he is planning on getting married the next afternoon.  Along the way a cheetah arrives on the scene and turns everything upside down.  To make a long story short, this movie was beneath these two actors.  It was a comedy that for me was way too long. 

I have seen this movie on many greatest movie lists, but frankly, I am not sure why.  Only two stars for me on this one.

An Affair in Trinidad - 1952

When I consider top actresses I use 4 categories to add up their overall performance-
1. Ability to act- how do they deliver liines, how smooth are they on camera, etc.
2. Dancing
3. Singing
4. Overall looks and how they present themselves

If you score 1-10 on each of those categories I really think Rita Hayworth is around 35 points. It is what sets her apart from other Hollywood sex goddesses. She was more than that. She was a professional dancer before ever becoming an actress. Her voice is just plain incredible. Because of her - this plain movie become a 3.5 star movie. Who else can star with Fred Astaire in several movies and hold her own? And lets be honest- she is gorgeous.

This movie stars Glen Ford and Rita Hayworth together - just like Gilda which came out 4 years previously (and is in my top 100 list). Ford plays Steve Emery - a man who has flown to Trinidad because his brother sent him a letter telling him there would be a job for him in that Country. Hayworth plays Chris Emery - married to Steve's brother. We never actually meet Steve's brother because he was murdered before the show starts. Steve then has to find out who is behind his murder, which the police are saying was a suicide. Pretty easy to predict the ending, but a fun movie along the way.

There are a few fun characters and overall an okay show. I am too much of a sentamentalist because I like these movies just for the pure fact that they don't exist anymore. The golden age of Hollywood is gone. The close ups on the actors faces, the lighting to bring out their eyes, all of that is just history. No nudity, sex, vulgarity, drugs, or language in this one- so it wouldn't even make it to the big screen in todays world and that is okay with me. I like the old movies.

Moneyball (2011)

I love baseball, so by default I am supposed to love this movie, but unfortunately this movie was a bit to long.  It follows the true story of Billy Bean, the GM of the Oakland A's, and his quest to make the best team possible out of the smallest payroll in the league.  He struggles with the old fashion mindset of finding and replacing good players with good players.  In his search he runs across a recent Yale graduate Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill, superbe).  Peter graduated in finance and had created a formula to access players, not just if they were super stars, but what their on base percentages were.
Billy find this idea as a valuable new way to look at creating a team and takes a large chance in doing it.  If you remember back to the 2002 season, they were the laughing stock of the league, but then went on the get the longest win streak of any team in the history of the game. 

There are a couple back stories that were needed to explain some aspects of the story, but sadly they made the movie long.  Jonah Hill was amazing and well deservant of his Oscar nod, while Brad Pitt did a great job as well. 

The Quiet Man - 1954

My wife and I watched the first 75 min and just could not get into this movie. I did like the shots of Ireland, but did not like the fake backdrops that they used in some scenes. I did like O'Hara and Wayne but could not understand the locals when they spoke with the Irish accent. I felt the movie was slow and just couldn't get into it, sorry I gave it a chance but it struck out with me.

Spy Game - 2001

Movie #29 in my quest to watch all of Robert Redford's movies. This one is an intense espionage movie starring Redford and Pitt. It is rated R for using the F word about 10 times.

I give it 3 solid stars but nothing more. I liked the storyline but felt parts of the movie were too slow. Some of that acting by the FBI and CIA employees was just awful. Pitt and Redford were great. Not a real winner here.

The Hunger Games (2012)

I went into this movie knowing and understanding the premise, but I will have to add this to my list of movies I wished I had never seen. The concept of kids killing kids as haunted me since I saw it. Please do not get me wrong, this movie was well made, and the bloodiness was kept to a minimum, but the whole concept haunts me.

TrollHunter (2010)

A small group of college students from Norway are doing an expose on the poaching of bears in the surrounding communities. They begin to focus their efforts on a mystreous man who lives in a local trailer park and only goes out at night. One night they decide to follow him, and this desission leads them to the discovery that this man is in fact not a poacher at all but is a troll hunter. Yes you read that right a troll hunter. REluctantly he allows them to follow him around as he hunts trolls; he begins to tell them his story, hoping it will allow for him to get out of the business. This movie had me fromt he very beginning, I was hooked. It was filmed the same way that the Blair Witch Project was filmed, so it gave the sense that this was an actual event taking place, unfortunately they showed us the trolls. Picture the muppets from the Dark Crystal; the very labored movements and unanimated faces. Beyond that draw back I loved this film. I told a co-worker of mine to watch it and he told me today that he turned it off after five minutes. This movie was interesting to me, and it had very beautiful images of the fjords of Norway.