Blu-ray Review: The Major and the Minor (1942)

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There's hoping you look younger and then there's hoping you look twelve. And as it turns out, twelve is exactly how old Ginger Rogers — then age thirty — was going for in screenwriter Billy Wilder's American directorial debut, The Major and the Minor.

Tired of being propositioned in one dead end job after another (totaling twenty-five in a single year), and unable to pay the full adult fare for a train ticket home, Rogers loses the makeup, braids her hair, and adjusts her clothes to pass herself off as a child to get the cheaper rate from New York back to Iowa.

Sliding into Ray Milland's private sleeping car when the conductor catches onto her act, Rogers gets more than she bargained for when she begins to fall for the handsome major. Stranded in Indiana after a storm, the Major she calls Uncle Philip brings Susan (Rogers) home to where he's currently working as an instructor at a military academy while waiting to return to active duty.

Though she's stuck living with his fianceé Pamela (Rita Johnson) who grows suspicious of her fiancé's devotion to the startlingly womanly adolescent, the cadets make Susan feel right at home, delighting in her company so much that they actually create a schedule to see who gets to spend time with the "girl" from dawn to dusk.

A May December romantic comedy that plays out under the guise of a Shakespearean style masquerade, while The Major and The Minor has the added risk of what without the pretense would be a love story between an adult and a purported adolescent, the film was a surprising hit at the 1942 box office. Billy Wilder's first time out at bat as a Hollywood director and based upon Edward Childs Carpenter's 1923 play based on the 1921 story by Fannie Kilbourne, Major helped establish some of the main themes and plot devices of mistaken identity that Wilder would revisit throughout his career in films such as Some Like it Hot and Love in the Afternoon.

Playing up their bond as a wholesome uncle-niece or mentor-mentee style relationship while blurring some of the risqué edges in Susan's interactions with the overeager hormonal cadets, while there's absolutely no mistaking Ginger Rogers for a tween, she's utterly dynamite in Major, which was written by Wilder and Charles Brackett with the newly minted Oscar winner in mind.

Responding strongly to the inciting incident at its premise as she'd occasionally posed as a younger child to save fare money as a younger woman when traveling with her mother, in the film that would become one of her personal favorites throughout her career, Rogers stars alongside her real-life mother Lela E. Rogers in a memorable sequence in Major's final act.

Yet where it was Rogers' job to let us in on the joke, Ray Milland nobly avoids the temptation many in his position might've felt to deliver his lines with a wink by instead playing everything on the level. Further lending the work some gravitas, in a role originally intended for Cary Grant that was later spontaneously offered to Milland by Wilder while shouting out of his car at a stoplight, the actor turns in an impressively controlled yet altogether sunny leading man performance.

A great reminder of not only Ginger Rogers' versatility as an actress in all genres beyond musicals but also a fascinating jumping off point from writing to directing by a screenwriter hoping for more control over his scripts, The Major and the Minor has been given a stunningly clear transfer to Blu-ray in this new Arrow release. Arriving shortly after their gorgeous restoration of Hold Back the Dawn, which, like Major, was also penned by Wilder and Brackett, this Arrow edition comes complete with an archival interview with Milland, an hour long radio play with the original leads reprising their roles, as well as a feature length critical commentary, essay, and featurette sure to be of interest to classic film buffs.

Largely overlooked in Wilder's legendary career, The Major and the Minor might be in comparison a minor entry in his enviable filmography but the featherlight romantic comedy still sparkles today, thanks to the jovial turns by its committed leads as well as a trademark Wilder style that's half 1930s screwball and half slightly twisted fairy tale, suitable — Rogers style — for ages twelve and up.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Echo in the Canyon (2018)

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The second film released so far this year that was at least partially inspired by Jacques Demy's 1969 English language debut Model Shop, just like Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Echo in the Canyon is a love letter to L.A. in the 1960s.

And while Hollywood turned fact into fiction, as a documentary, Echo deals strictly with the facts. Or if not facts then the stories people have told themselves often enough to become facts, as Wallflowers front man Jakob Dylan discovers when he interviews landmark figures in the music scene who created the iconic California sound responsible for luring so many people from all over to the hills of Hollywood like a siren song.

Talking to the living members of The Byrds, The Mamas and The Papas, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, and more as well as next generation artists Tom Petty and Jackson Browne, Echo in the Canyon is at its most compelling best when it allows the voices of the era — including British imports Eric Clapton and Ringo Star — to speak for themselves and control the narrative.

Filling Echo with the gorgeous sounds of some of the Laurel Canyon scene's most definitive musical poems, we learn the story behind a few of the era's ubiquitous hits, including one confession by Michelle Phillips about her affair with bandmate Denny Doherty, which inspired her other bandmate — her husband John Phillips — to write "Go Where You Wanna Go."

Wanting to pay tribute to these songs and artists (and undoubtedly save a bundle on music rights fees) in a modern day narrative that is unfortunately far less engrossing than Dylan's interviews, the film follows the passionate Jakob Dylan as he gathers other musicians and records new covers of the songs he then performs in a live show.

A veritable jumble that has us jump from an engrossing interview with somebody like the great Brian Wilson to Dylan performing "In My Room" with Fiona Apple onstage and/or in the studio, the entertaining, if admittedly strained work, tries to cover too much ground and — like wind chimes blowing in the breeze — sounds lovely in the moment but fails to leave a lasting impression.

Nonetheless well-intentioned, Echo in the Canyon feels like it should've been made into two separate films — the first, a historical look at the music scene and the second, an affectionate concert filled with talented artists like Beck and Norah Jones celebrating the music they love in song.

Underplaying some of the big conflicts of the era including the Vietnam War and the protest anthems that came out of the late 1960s and ignoring some of the major voices of the era including the glaringly overlooked Joni Mitchell and The Doors, Echo, it seems, protects egos by picking and choosing the stories it wants to tell.

Directed by the former President of Columbia Records, Andrew Slater, who dreamed up the idea with Dylan after the two viewed Model Shop, which they felt was the visual equivalent of what The Mamas and The Papas or The Beach Boys sounded like, the film works very well as a promotional video for its catchy, star-studded soundtrack. As such, I defy anyone to watch Echo and not instantly become a new fan of Jade Castrinos, who, in accompanying Dylan, sings her absolute heart out.

However, brief scenes where Dylan sits around with artists and talks about their influences feel forced, as though they're eating up screen time that would've been better utilized by the original artists as they reveal their own influences and experiences writing, recording, and sharing songs with their neighbors in the artistically welcoming environment.

Though it feels like a California hangout movie, in the end, Echo in the Canyon is a missed opportunity to either delve more deeply into the subject at its core or focus purely on the impact that the music had on generations of other artists.

Anchored by the admirably knowledgeable Dylan and Slater, Echo shines brightest in its interviews and in some truly rousing performances. Yet instead of dividing the chorus from the melody to separate the music of the past from the sounds of the future, Slater's film plays like a passionate cover band album. A pleasant but empty experience, Echo in the Canyon brings back the memory of a concert you've never been to before but it could've — and indeed should've — been so much more.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Netflix Movie Review: Tall Girl (2019)

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Whether it's the way you laugh too loud when you're nervous, stammer when you're shy, or seem to forget everything you've ever studied when you're handed a test, everyone has at least one thing that they wish they could change about themselves. And while most of us have figured out how to cope with or adapt to this perceived flaw as adults, there's nothing like high school to magnify these insecurities even more and doubly so when the thing we wish we could change about ourselves is something physical.

In nearly six foot two inch sixteen-year-old Jodi's case, although a simple search on the internet reveals that there is such a thing as height reduction surgery, the excruciatingly painful procedure isn't exactly a practical solution for the New Orleans high school junior played by Ava Michelle. Hoping for the same effect, she tries slouching her way into invisibility to avoid all of the snickers, stares, and inane comments by classmates who ask her how the weather is up there, even though that line is older than the Civil War battles she reads about in her American history textbook.

Establishing the theme, first as she describes the alienation experienced by the main character in A Confederacy of Dunces to a classmate and then in her voice-over narration, Jodi serves as an pleasant, immediately relatable stand-in for any hangup the viewer might have about themselves. However, as well drawn as the three-dimensional Jodi is, the rest of the film's characters are thinly sketched caricatures of retro teen movie archetypes by comparison.

And this is evident right from the start as we meet her fiercest supporters including the fashionably hip Fareeda (Anjelika Washington) who puts bullies in their place with one well spun line and the Duckie inspired Jack Dunkleman (played by scene stealer Griffin Gluck) who's had a crush on Jodi for as long as Kimmy (Clara Wilsey) has tormented her since they were children. Suffice it to say that, despite the affability of the actors bringing them to life, everyone in Tall Girl's orbit seems like they've wandered over from film sets of decades gone by, which basically makes them the "how's the weather up there?" of teen movie characters.

Although screenwriter Sam Wolfson tries to update the proceedings with escape rooms and gluten free bakeries, it feels mostly stale. Inconsistent in its characterization as it undercuts Jodi's mom (Angela Kinsey) as a passive aggressive prom queen and makes her dad (Steve Zahn) a hyper focused alarmist waiting for his tall daughter's health to fail in their earliest scenes before they mellow into almost entirely different people later on, it's to Kinsey and Zahn's credit that we remain interested in their roles.

While it's refreshing to make Jodi's beautiful pageant perfect older sister Harper (Sabrina Carpenter) so supportive of her "big little sister" instead of making her another object of misery in Jodi's life, with Harper's laughable grasp of history and pleas that Jodi should slap her if she eats carbs, she quickly turns into yet another stereotype.

Hopeful when Stig (Luke Eisner), a dreamy Swedish exchange student arrives who's even taller than she is, Jodi experiences her first serious crush and turns to Harper for help attracting the boy who's staying with Dunkleman. Pursuing Jodi in very different ways to differing degrees of success, Eisner and Gluck play off each other very well and share some unexpectedly funny, awkward scenes in the process. Things get even more complicated when her nemesis Kimmy sets her sights on and lands the handsome Swede, but when the two find they have a musical connection, the first of several love triangles develops.

Unwisely relegating Jodi's best friend Fareeda to extra status as the film goes on when some of the makeover scenes with Carpenter and Kinsey might've benefited from a young comedic buffer as opposed to the requisite mini dressing room montage and a lame in-film ad for Mac Cosmetics, it's clear that the film just doesn't know how to make adequate use of its lively ensemble. Not the only gimmicky scene, Tall Girl features a cringe-worthy moment where Jodi's parents host a Tip Toppers tall person's club party that goes nowhere. Likewise, infusing the film with a questionable message where each time Jodi starts to have confidence, it's inspired by a guy either finding her attractive or doing something selfless for her, by the time we reach the obligatory Mean Girls reminiscent big moment at the dance where our heroine literally tells us what she's learned, it doesn't seem remotely genuine or earned.

Still entertaining enough to watch in bed on a sick day or up late at a sleepover, despite Tall Girl's wholly original main character with whom many viewers will easily identify thanks to their own hangups, it's one of Netflix's weakest original YA romcoms. Taking a backseat to the streaming giant favorite To All the Boys I've Loved Before, Tall Girl also pales in comparison to the similarly themed, infinitely better structured (and likewise '80s inspired) Sierra Burgess is a Loser.

Yet with the color blocked background on display in Tall Girl's opening frames as Jodi discusses Dunces, the keen visual eye of first time feature filmmaker Nzingha Stewart makes for some truly memorable scenes that keep our interest even when the film itself starts to meander.

A romcom loving tall girl myself (and one who — just shy of six feet — was actually taller than her male first grade teacher when she was in the first grade), needless to say, I was easily the ideal audience for the film. Unfortunately, no matter how much I wished otherwise, in the end the Netflix movie plays like a version of teen movie Cliffs Notes where everything stays on the surface and, save for one moving scene with Steve Zahn, never gets too deep.

Though Tall Girl comes up short — to use a criticism that's sure to be the critic's version of "how's the weather up there," — it's still an admirable attempt to walk a mile in a sixteen-year-old girl's size thirteen men's shoes. Bolstered by a charming cast, while it's obvious that the film's heart is in the right place, unfortunately, Girl needs more authenticity and less artifice to make it count.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: Genèse (2018)

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AKA: Genesis

I know he likes me but does he like me? How do I ask her to be my girlfriend? What does he mean we should stay together but see other people?

Three Québécois teenagers navigate their first twinges of love, the devastation of heartbreak, the mysteries of desire, and other affairs of the heart in Philippe Lesage's new film Genèse, which follows in the footsteps of his previous pictures Copenhagen: A Love Story and The Demons in blending together memoir and fiction.

Often letting the camera linger on the behavior and body language of its main characters and the way that it changes when they're in front of a classroom, crowd, or alone, Genèse uses sumptuous, languorous visuals and its moodily atmospheric soundtrack to deposit us into the heart of the film in a way that recalls the work of Sofia Coppola and Wong Kar-wai.

Drawing on his background as a documentary filmmaker to establish the film's setting in and around private schools, colleges, and camps in Quebec, Lesage paints a picture of three teens, different both on the surface and in personality, who are looking for love.

In the film's strongest and most emotionally arresting storyline, we meet Guillaume (Théodore Pellerin) who, though always up for a laugh or impression as the class clown at his private boys school, is rather introspective and insecure deep down. Reading J. D. Salinger and listening to The Smiths, Guillaume is the type of dreamy eyed boy we would've had a crush on in high school, only to discover later on that he has a complicated crush of his own that might redefine his entire life.

Startled when her first serious boyfriend tells her that he thinks they should be free to sleep with other people, Guillaume's older half-sister Charlotte (Noée Abita) is sent reeling, moving from one relationship to the next (and always with the wrong guy), which has devastating consequences as the film continues and editor Mathieu Bouchard-Malo weaves the two plots together.

Venturing away from the city into a nature based coda, we're introduced to the stand-in for the filmmaker in the form of adolescent Félix (Édouard Tremblay-Grenier), who faces the first stirrings of love for a girl he becomes enamored of at summer camp. Though still filmed in a lush, contemporary style by cinematographer Nicolas Canniccioni, there's something delightfully old fashioned about the pacing and mood of the final section of Genèse, which feels as though it could be played side by side with François Truffaut's frothy 400 Blows follow-up and tale of first love, Antoine and Colette.

A welcome shot of instantly relatable nostalgia, Genèse's last act is played in a higher, lighter key than the rest of the picture. Yet, coming as it does after a shocking act of violence takes place, which is immediately glossed over by ignoring the aftermath, it takes a minute for the film (as well as the viewer) to convincingly ease back into the innocent reverie of summer flirtation and romance.

Inspired by real stories of assault that had been shared with Lesage by friends, while the stark, matter-of-fact portrayal alarms us enough, the film’s real misstep was in leaving these characters much too quickly before we truly know how they are, which gives the scene a cavalier aura that I can't imagine the filmmaker had intended. Yet tonal and structural misstep aside, Genèse manages to fall back into place when its last young protagonist falls in love.

Using music — especially "Outside" by Tops as a motif throughout — much like Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats, Genèse boasts a superb soundtrack that you'll find yourself wanting to Shazam multiple times throughout the film. Translating the characters' inner lives in a way we can easily understand through not only its musical counterpoint but also the way in which the camera holds on the faces of the trio as they try to reconcile reality with their hearts, Lesage invites us to take the journey as well — walking beside the teens in good times and bad. Like a secret diary come to life with all of its highs and lows, and the little things we know that will stay with us forever, Philippe Lesage's Genèse feels like the cinematic equivalent of a memory.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978)

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Shopping for a new lover for his depressed wife, Raoul (Gérard Depardieu) gets more than he bargained for when the man he picks up, Stéphane (Patrick Dewaere) not only falls in love with his wife but becomes his new best friend in the process. And while normally this would be a recipe for disaster, in writer-director Bertrand Blier's hands, it's just the beginning of what turns out to be a beautiful friendship.

Highly verbal in the streets and easygoing in the sheets, in Blier's freewheeling sex comedy Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, the two men bond over Mozart (who they feel would've been their third amigo) as well as their devotion to the sweet but chronically ill Solange (Carole Laure) who they're sure they can cure with sex, if not with them than perhaps someone else.

Treated as little more than a neurotic sex object by the men in her life who are desperate to give her the baby they're convinced will fix everything, the inarguably underwritten and frequently cavalierly nude Laure is easily the most shortchanged participant in Blier's daring ode to l'amour. Still, once you give into the shenanigans, it's hard to deny the effervescently irreverent film's charms.

And indeed Handkerchiefs' success is entirely dependent upon the laissez-faire attitude of the first half of the film in order to adequately prepare viewers for the startling turns of the second, which finds Solange seduced by a genius outcast who, despite acting even more mature than her other lovers, has barely entered his teen years. A flabbergasting development, it's to the cast's extraordinary credit that they're able to sell Blier's ribald, increasingly satirical twists without derailing the picture completely as a gender swapped spin on Lolita rather than a remarkably frank romcom.

Intriguingly, Handkerchiefs sent shockwaves in the American media with its one step forward, two steps back depiction and treatment of Laure more than anything else when it was released at the height of the sexual revolution. Nonetheless, the film, which garnered the director and France the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award was also named the National Society of Film Critics Best Film of 1978 over The Deer Hunter and Days of Heaven.

A light as a feather ode to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, with little regard to social mores or laws, Blier's film operates like a contemporary fairy tale as opposed to anything even remotely steeped in reality. Using everything from Solange's knitting to the way that her lovers gaze at her in her sleep and their taste in classical music as motifs that pay off later in unexpected ways, Blier's background as a playwright and novelist undeniably enriches the film as it continues.

Newly released to Blu-ray in a brilliant fortieth anniversary restoration, Handkerchiefs, which also features a memorable Cesar award-winning score by Georges Delerue, remains as uncompromisingly subversive as it is impossibly entertaining.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

DVD Review: Back of the Net (2019)

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Before she accidentally got on the wrong bus and wound up not at Harold Academy Australian Semester at Sea but Harold Soccer Academy instead, the only experience that young gifted American science student Cory Bailey (Sofia Wylie) had with the sport was spray painting soccer balls for her AP solar system diorama.

Forced to get a lot more acquainted with soccer since, by the time she's discovered her mistake her ship has literally sailed and her parents are practicing medicine in New Dehli at the moment, Cory has no choice but to make peace with the ball she'd much rather paint than kick.

Thrilled when she finds out she'll be able to study chemistry — as all student athletes are required to take classes at the academy as well — although soccer takes some getting used to, Cory is determined to make the best of it. Buoyed by a great group of new friends including cute, talented player Oliver (Trae Robin), though she's tested throughout Louise Alston's jubilant feature Back of the Net, Cory's positive attitude goes a long way when she makes an enemy out of Tiarnie Coupland's queen bee, Edie.

While there's nothing original about TV movie veterans Alison Spuck McNeeley and Casie Tabanou's admittedly paint-by-numbers script which adheres very closely to the underdog sports movie playbook established over the last five decades of cinematic storytelling, Net stays afloat with its upbeat spirit and breakneck pace.

Planting the seeds for actual depth and/or stronger subplot potential early on, such as when we learn that Oliver's financially strapped family has been going through a tough time, unfortunately the eighty-two minute feature doesn't give moments like these the time or support needed to let them bloom. Yet although it might not win over adults who've seen so many underdog sports movies that they've gotten the mechanics of the plot down to a science, by refreshingly centering its tale on a young woman of color and hiring women behind-the-scenes to bring it to life, this girl power movie's heart is definitely in the right place.

A surprisingly effective — if ultimately underwhelming — combination of science and sport, Alston's film is sure to strike a chord with its target audience who may have seen the Australian feature on the Disney Channel before its recent DVD release. While Back of the Net doesn't manage to transcend its predictable formula, by moving as fast as a soccer ball down the field, its irrepressible enthusiasm and infectious energy is hard to deny.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.